


I Have Crossed Oceans Of Time To Find You

by thefutureisbright



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, Bill dies in this just FYI, Bottom Richie Tozier, Eventual Fluff, M/M, Romance, Slow Burn, Smut, Temporary Character Death, Top Eddie Kaspbrak, Vampire Bites, Vampire Sex, Vampires, and when I say loosely I mean it, my warped take on a soulmates fic, some sort of graphic descriptions of violence but I don't think it's that bad, very very loosely inspired by the novels Dracula and The Castle of Otranto
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-14
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-01-30 20:31:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21434281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefutureisbright/pseuds/thefutureisbright
Summary: Bringing the paper but millimetres from his face, he noticed six tiny, blink-and-you’ll-miss-them words, written neatly besides the line.‘the road that leads to Nowhere’The road, connected to the main street running through the small town of Zhizn, curved in a gradual arc that halted before it even attempted to connect to another road. It stopped, abruptly, in the middle of an empty section of map, jutting out from the rest of the lines awkwardly, like the cartographer had become distracted and forgotten to finish it.A small part of him, a part of him that had been born the moment he had laid eyes on those six words, knew he’d found it. If Krov was to be anywhere, it was here. This infant part of him screamed with the lungs of a newborn, it’s here it’s here it’s here it’s here, and then, in a voice that wasn’t his own, slick and dripping with rot, it spoke again,seek Him.[OR: Cartographer Richard Tozier goes on a solo mission to find, and map, the seemingly mythical town of Krov, and unearths a deadly secret, a secret that goes by the name of Edward Kaspbrak.]
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 71
Kudos: 264
Collections: It Faves, Rare Reddie Collections





	1. Chapter 1

The sleepy town of Krov died in 1539, and no one heard its death rattle. Ask a historian, and they’ll tell you that it was the pestilence that finished Krov off, that death had swung his buboed scythe just enough times to ensure that the entire town was swallowed by the gaping maw of the plague pit. Those who could afford to migrate south to Brașov did so, plague snapping at their heels as they ran. Those bound to the town with invisible manacles barricaded themselves in their small houses and prayed feverishly to a deaf God. Now dead, the body of the town sailed straight past rigor mortis and steam rolled into rot and ruin. Buildings crumbled, and wild flowers sprouted, vein-like, in the cracks.

The only building that remained stood proud and untouched by the hand of decay at the top of the tallest hill, a splintered pearl-white rib jutting out of a wound.

The town of Krov heaved its last staccato breath in 1439, and in 1893, Richard Tozier, hands scrabbling against pallid skin, followed suit.

* * *

Ever since he was a boy, Richard had been fascinated by maps. When he was an infant, still attached to his mother’s breast, he’d watched as his father, back hunched and eyes squinting, had drawn the swooping, dancing lines of the town.

“Is that our house?” Richard had lisped when he was older, with a tongue that still felt too large in his small mouth.

“Yes,” his father confirmed, “that’s our house, and that’s where the tree is that you fell out of, and that’s where your grandmother lives, and that’s where …”

Richard had watched with fascination, eyes glued to the rustly piece of paper, as his father pointed at each landmark. His father told him that he’s a _cartographer_, someone standing on the shoulders of the many great men who came before, men who charted the land with careful eyes and dancing lines. With his thumb lodged firmly in his mouth, Richard had confidently announced that he wanted to be a _cart-grapher_ too.

* * *

The tale of the disappearing town had fast become Richard’s favourite bedtime story. When Brașov marched into the mists of winter, the nights drawing in earlier and earlier, young Richard could be found tucked up in bed, head poking out from under the thick, scratchy blanket.

“Tell me the story about the disappearing town again?”

At that, the question that came, like clockwork, at the time of year when the blustery winds hammered on the windowpanes with fleeting fingers, his father rolled his eyes.

“You know this story just about as well as I do, Richie”

And, as he always did, Richard would squeal with faux-frustration until his father, with a tut and a sigh, relented.

“Once upon a time, a long long time ago, in a small town called Krov …”

* * *

True to his six year old self, Richard apprenticed with his father in the art of cartography when he came of age. Like his father, with steady hands, Richard immortalised the boundaries of his home town, the houses, the forest on the eastern most edge of the town, the church with its singing bells. Now fluent in lines of longitude, Richard slowly built up an impressive portfolio, expansive enough to rival even his fathers. Still, when the snow fell from the sky in great woollen clumps, Richard found himself sprawled on the floor in front of the raging fire, gazing up at his father.

“Do tell me the tale of the disappearing town, just one last time”

“That’s what you said last year, and the year before that, and the year before that and –”

“I know! I know. I am a rotten liar, but please, tell me just one last time”

“How about you tell _me _the story, since I am now a weary old man,” his father scolded, the fire dancing in the watery sheen coating his eyes.

Shifting onto his back, Richard closed his eyes, and began to speak.

“Once upon a time, a long long time ago, in a small town called Krov … wait, father?”

“Yes, child?”

“Why is Krov not on the big map in your study?”

His father rolled his eyes. “Why on earth would a mythological place be on a map?”

“Maybe people just haven’t put enough effort into finding it,” Richard mumbled, as he stared up at the cracks that divided the ceiling into fictional countries.

* * *

Richard’s obsession with the story of the disappearing town only deepened after that conversation. Blindly convinced that the town could never be anything but real, Richard devoted large portions of his time to pouring through printed collections of maps of the region, basing his search off the vague references to an unusually large and dense forest collected at the belly of a mountain range the town was near . Confident that he’d plotted the 100 mile radius that the town must be located in, Richard intensified his search, picking through map after map, going back four centuries, searching for the elusive town.

However, the search proved fruitless. Exhausted and bleary eyed, Richard scooped the pile of crinkly maps up into his arms, intending to throw them onto the fire in a fit of sleep-deprived impulsivity when a fresh, crisp map fluttered to the floor like a leaf carried by a lazy autumn breeze. Dropping the rest of the papers to the floor, Richard stooped and picked up the errant map, and inspected it.

_The Northern Transylvanian Region (1530)_

The map, though ostensibly entirely unremarkable, felt inexplicably hot in Richard’s hands, as if he’d just wrenched it from a hungry flame. Tracing the roads with a trembling finger, Richard’s eyes fell upon a faint, but very obviously present, line that he’d not noticed in the previous maps. Dropping to his knees, Richard spread out the other maps of northern Transylvania, eyes searching for, but never finding, the line. Scrabbling once more for the 1530 map, Richard again located the faint line, but this time, looked closer. Bringing the paper but millimetres from his face, he noticed six tiny, blink-and-you’ll-miss-them words, written neatly besides the line.

‘_the road that leads to Nowhere’_

The road, connected to the main street running through the small town of Zhizn, curved in a gradual arc that halted before it even attempted to connect to another road. It stopped, abruptly, in the middle of an empty section of map, jutting out from the rest of the lines awkwardly, like the cartographer had become distracted and forgotten to finish it.

A small part of him, a part of him that had been born the moment he had laid eyes on those six words, knew he’d found it. If Krov was to be anywhere, it was here. This infant part of him screamed with the lungs of a newborn, _it’s here it’s here it’s here it’s here, _and then, in a voice that wasn’t his own, slick and dripping with rot, it spoke again,

_seek Him._

* * *

Richard didn’t recognise the name on the back of the map. He asked his father if he had ever heard of a sixteenth-century cartographer called J Alexe, and his father nodded his head enthusiastically.

“Yes, I worked with him over twenty years ago now. I haven’t spoken to him in years, why do you ask?”

“No significant reason,” Richard had replied, playing at inconspicuous, “I just found an map he drew a few years ago and was curious”

“Oh? I didn’t think he’d published anything for several years after – well. I think I have an old letter of his”

With that, his father stood from his chair, knees creaking, and shuffled into his study. Several minutes later he emerged, waving a crumpled letter victoriously in his hands.

“See, here. He said he was retiring from the craft, but the old devil mustn’t have been able to resist her siren call. Could you show me the map once you’re done with it?”

“Of course"

Taking the letter from his father’s hands, under the pretence of reading the rather dry conversation about cartography tools, Richard internally memorised the return address.

* * *

Dear Mr Alexe,

I do hope you won’t mind me contacting you. I am the son of Wentworth Tozier, I believe you worked together many times. The reason for this letter is that I found a copy of your map of northern Transylvania in the fourteenth-century, and I notice that there is a road marked ‘the road to nowhere’. I was wondering if you would be able to confirm whether this road leads to the city of Krov?

Many thanks,

Richard Wentworth Tozier

Immediately after finishing his letter, Richard folded the paper in half, before carefully sliding it into a cream coloured envelope. Impulsively, with the eagerness of a child, he all but ran to the post office, sending the letter off to, hopefully, reach its desired recipient in full health.

When he arrived home, his father waved a shiny black envelope in his face.

“This arrived for you”

Richard took the envelope from his father, retreated to his bedroom, and ripped it open.

Mr Tozier,

It is wonderful to make your acquaintance. I have admired your father since we met long ago, and it is a long awaited privilege to speak with you. I believe the map you are enquiring about is simply the object of a joke once played on your father, who was once enthralled by the story of Krov.–

_A thick blot of black ink strikes through the next line, obscuring it so Richard cannot read it; the word ‘home’ barely visible near the margin._

–I assume by your letter that Wentworth’s indulgence in the story of Krov has not faltered, unless this obsession is hereditary. _These are li_\- (_again, the rest of the line has been struck through in thick black ink_). I can assure you that the road to Nowhere leads not to nothing, but to something that cannot be explained using ink. It’s true that Krov no longer has a heartbeat, but it still breathes. Listen for it.

_And then, right at the bottom of the page, scrawled in a crusted, brown liquid, two words._

_seek Him_.

* * *

The decision to travel to Krov, following the road that lead to Nowhere, came to Richard as easily as the decision to send the letter to Alexe in the first place. He had spun his father a lie out of golden thread, told him that he was going to travel north, up towards Zhizn (this, of course, only a half lie) with the intention of visiting an old archive kept in the town hall. Such a town hall, and such an archive, didn’t exist, but his father didn’t know that.

Richard left on a frigid Monday, breath visible in the air when he’d bid his father farewell at the station. The train, a rickety thing that jaunted across the Romanian landscape like a drunk staggering home, wound this way and that, until, nearly a full day later, it pulled into the station at Zhizn. Richard wasted no time wandering the windy streets of Zhizn, instead, he walked with purpose into the tavern, door swinging violently behind him. A stunned hush fell over the patrons of the tavern, as they all turned with dinner-plate eyes to stare at the newcomer with wild hair and bottle-top glasses. The young woman stood behind the bar, glass of honey’d liquid frozen in the air comically, stared at him with curious eyes.

“Glass of ale, sir?”

“That would be marvellous,” Richard replied, and the quiet chatter resumed around him.

The tavern was fairly small, with a creaking wooden floor that sung out every time Richard took a step towards the bar.

“New around here, are you?” the barmaid asked, busying herself with pouring Richard’s drink.

“Yes. I’ve come up from Brașov, I’m trying to find a town that’s near here, perhaps you’ve heard of it”

“Aren’t any towns near here, Sir. Not for miles”

“Ah, but there is. It’s on this map, see,” Richard fished in his pocket, looking for J. Alexe’s map that he’d folded into tiny pieces, small enough to fit snugly in the pocket of his jacket.

Locating it, he pulled the map out and unfolded it on the bar. The barmaid, expression a hybrid bemused-annoyed, stared blankly at it. With eager fingers, Richard jabbed at the road to Nowhere.

“Here, I have reason to believe there’s a town at the end of this road, a town called Krov, have you –”

At the mention of the word Krov, the barmaid gagged dramatically, a great retch that sounded like it had been pulled directly from the very pit of her stomach. The noise startled Richard, his sentence extinguished abruptly like a flame.

“Are you alright, can I help? Do you need –”

“Stop,” the barmaid commanded, sticking her hands out in front of her, defensively, “I need nothing from you. I just … that place”

At that, Richard noticed that the quiet chatter had died down once more, and the silence hung itself oppressively around his neck.

“We don’t speak of that town here, lad,” a man called out, obscured by shadow, “not anymore. Not for centuries”

“Why ever not?”

“Brings bad things if you mention it. That word hasn’t been spoken on this here soil for decades and we’ve been just fine”

“See, I was hoping that I’d find someone to take me there, I have no transport”

“There’s no one here that’ll take you. You best go back where you came from, forget you ever came here, forget about that … place. No sane man would take you there” the barmaid insisted.

“How much are you paying?” the man from the shadows interrupted, slamming his glass down on the bar top.

“As much as it’ll take”

“It’s gonna cost you,” the man warned, but Richard shook his head.

“I’ll pay anything”

“It’ll cost you everything”

* * *

The man, William Denbrough, was a drunk. Richard learnt that almost immediately. As William stood up, with every intention of leading Richard and his luggage to his cart, but this plan had been interrupted by his inebriated brains inability to keep himself upright. Richard watched as William staggered, and then fell to his knees as if in prayer, all the while laughing rather manically to himself.

“Er … Do you need help?”

“Naw, leave him be. He’s fine, just a bit giddy. Give him a few minutes and he’ll be right as rain,” The barmaid laughed, scrubbing the inside of a glass with a cloth.

“Is he here a lot?”

She nodded. “Every day like clockwork. He always says to me, ‘Bev, keep me out’, but his habit pays half of my wage, so, I let him in every time”

By that point, William had managed to haul himself to his feet, and was walking towards the door on unsteady feet. Richard said goodbye to the barmaid, and followed William out of the door. With rough, calloused hands, William threw Richard’s luggage unceremoniously onto the back of his cart, before clambering onto it and, barely giving Richard a chance to hop on himself, urged his horse onwards.

The journey took a little over two hours, and, try as he might, Richard could coax very little information out of his chauffer.

“How many times have you been to Krov?”

“I haven’t”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know”

“Do you know if anyone lives there?”

“I don’t know”

“Do you know when the town disappeared off the map?”

“I don’t know”

“Do you know _why _the town disappeared off the map?”

“I don’t know”

William’s mantra, _‘I don’t know’, _echoed in Richard’s mind for the rest of the journey, which they spent in uncomfortable silence. Thirty minutes before they stopped, William’s horse became unsettled, whickering and whinnying loudly. Fifteen minutes before they stopped, the horse began to sweat, despite the aggressive chill that seeped into Richard’s marrow. Five minutes before they stopped, the horse bucked wildly, eyes wide and white.

“He won’t go on, you’ll have to walk from here. I’ll be back for you in five hours, leave your luggage with me” William muttered, climbing off his cart and running a soothing hand down the horses sodden neck.

“I see. Is it far from here?” Richard asked, climbing down.

“No, a ten minute walk or so”

“How will I know if I’m in the right place?”

“You’ll know,” William said, and, with a grimace, continued.

“You’ll smell it”

With that, and without any further explanation, William Denbrough and his petrified horse disappeared back down the track, leaving Richard standing dumbly on the side of the dusty path.

* * *

Cursing William Denbrough and his alcohol-hazed brain, Richard had trudged down the path for nearly thirty minutes before he reached any indication that he was going in the right direction. As he pushed his way through a thicket of thorny bushes that obscured the path, a huge wooden sign loomed ominously overhead.

KROV.

Richard stared at the sign, unblinking, unbreathing. Krov. Seeing the word, written down in letters as large as his arm span, set Richard’s blood on fire. As plain as day and night, as real as the sun and stars, there it was, written in chipped paint on rotting wood. Krov.

Richard scurried past the sign, finally breaching the border of the town. As soon as he set foot past the boundary, however, Richard was hit by an overwhelming stink. The stench of decay hung heavy in the air. It was a cloying smell, a syrupy stench that stoppered his nostrils with the scent of death, of decaying plant matter, of wood left in the rain, mixed with something Richard couldn’t place. The sort of smell that attacked you, violently, unrelentingly, but the sort of smell you’d let assault you. The sort of smell you’d let devour you, consume you, subsume you. It was a smell that, deep in the hollow of his gut, Richard craved. Covering his nose and mouth with his hand, he pushed on.

The town, as Richard has expected, was entirely deserted. The buildings were nothing more than dilapidated old huts dotted slapdash along the main street, with the houses stood in hodgepodge rows like crumbling gravestones in a long-forgotten churchyard. Dead plants wound themselves around the houses, out through the windows, sprouting through cracks in the walls like hairs. As he picked his way down the street, stepping over centuries old detritus, Richard listened to the click-clacking of his shoes, echoing painfully loudly in the otherwise deafening silence that snaked its way through the town. There were no birds singing their evening songs, no insects chirping happily in the undergrowth, no leaves rustling in the autumn breeze. The sky was empty. The plants were dead. The air was still.

Fishing in his pocket for his notebook, Richard began to sketch the lines of the town, using little boxes to indicate where each building was. It had always been his intention to map this town, to discover it, to immortalise it, godlike. However, the further Richard ventured into the town, and the more streets he wandered down, pencil scribbling furiously, the worse his headache became. What had started as a dull echo in his head had swiftly become a cruel bellowing, a great roaring between his ears that caused his eyes to ache and his stomach to churn. The wind had picked up, nipping furiously at his heels, and the thin overcoat he was wearing provided but little respite. Rubbing his hands together in hopes of generating some friction, Richard began to walk purposefully towards the nearest house, hoping to find shelter from the wind. However, a rogue and rotting tree root ensnared his foot in its grasp, throwing the entirety of his bodyweight against the house. The door gave way, splintering into thousands of tiny shards, and Richard fell to the ground with a loud thump.

“_Son of a bitch!”_

Richard’s head collided with the tough ground with a dull thwack, and he lay there for several seconds, groaning pitifully to himself. He lay on his back, watching as the dust danced daintily in the air, illuminated in technicolour by the thin strings of light that filtered in from the windows. Richard rolled onto his side, before hauling his protesting bones upwards. Standing on unsteady feet, he surveyed the small lodgings, that seemed to be just big enough for one. The house was cold, colder than it had been outside, and the sickly-sweet smell of decay was much stronger. Rolling his aching shoulders, Richard advanced towards the only identifiable thing in the room – a small wooden pallet bed – before recoiling in horror. On the bed, lying perfectly serene with its head on a straw pillow and its arms crossed over its chest, was a person. Or, more accurately, the remains of what had once been a person. Taking careful steps so as to not to disturb the eternally slumbering corpse, he approached the pallet bed. The bones didn’t move. Upon closer inspection, the rib cage had been caved in, and in the now cavernous and empty space, in the space where previously the heart had thrummed with the energy of life, was a small, brown leather book.

_14th May 1539_

_Three more young men vanished from their beds the night before last. As before, all that remains is a bloody handprint. Mary came to visit, she tells me she is fleeing for _ _Bra_ _ș_ _ov in the morning light. I do not begrudge her this, but oh how I yearn to be taken from this place. I fear I shall die in my bed like a dog._

_16th May 1539_

_They will leave me. I hear them, each day, children screaming, men shouting, women weeping. They will leave me here, to rot with the town. The chanting grows quieter each night. It does not work. For now, silence._

_20th May 1539_

_I heard someone scream three nights ago. I have not heard anything since, not a whisper, not a groan, not a laugh, not a sob. _

_28th May 1539_

_I grow wearier and wearier each day. I am tormented by nightmares, of wheezing breaths, of hot saliva on feverish skin, of coal black eyes. It has come for me._

_3rd June 1539_

_It comes each night. Each night, it stands by my bed, and it watches. Never speaks, only breathes. I, the coward, cannot look. I do not look at it, and yet it looks at me. I feel it. Perhaps tomorrow I shall look. Perhaps tomorrow I shall talk to it. Tomorrow, I will open my eyes, and see what looks back._

The leather book fell from Richard’s hands with a clattering thud. On the last page, written in an almost illegible scrawl,

_seek Him. _

* * *

Richard couldn’t breathe. The combination of the biting cold, the skeleton lying peacefully on the pallet bed with a splintered rib-cage, and the bizarre diary had spliced together, reaching for Richard’s throat with large, meaty arms. He had a job to do. That much, he could do. Chart the town, immortalise it on paper, and then never return. It was enough to know that it was real, to breathe the air, but he didn’t want to be here, in this strange, silent, rotting world, any longer than was absolutely necessary. Richard left the house, relief hot and heavy on his tongue like treacle, but was stopped in his tracks by a monster looming over the town with bright, yellow eyes.

How he hadn’t noticed the large manor house, with its illuminated windows and soaring turrets, when he’d first begun his exploration was a mystery. The mansion, large enough to perhaps be described as a castle, stood erect and proud atop a large cliff that overlooked the rest of Krov. Something about the house, something about the way it stood against the grey sky, unnaturally, as if, at any moment, it would blink out of existence, tugged at Richard’s gut with slithering, persuading, hands.

_Come. Come. Come. _

As if on autopilot, with hurried footsteps, Richard began his ascent.

* * *

When Richard was nearly nine years old, his father had taken him on a brisk trek up one of the mountains near their house. His father had told him it wasn’t a mountain, that it had been, in fact, just a medium-sized hill, but Richard had bitterly complained otherwise. To him, and his bean-pole legs, that medium-sized hill was a Promethean effort, a mortal trying to scale the side of mount Olympus. This was nothing like that. This cliffside, at least four times as big as that medium-sized hill, was infinitely, suspiciously, easier. Richard expected his legs to give out at any point, expected his lungs to burn with the flames of exhaustion, but it never came. In fact, the headache that had been pummelling the inside of his skull continually since he began to breathe in the Krov air seemed to dissolve more and more with each step.

Soon enough, much sooner than he could have anticipated, Richard summited the cliff. His headache had entirely gone, and no memory of the debilitating pain remained. Staring at the mansion, the monstrosity that looked over the town with spiteful eyes and perfect stonework, Richard gulped. The windows, illuminated by a dim yellow light, stared back at him. Daring him, willing him, inviting him in with open arms and a hungry belly.

Richard graciously accepted.

* * *

The door opened easily. Stepping into the enormous entrance hall, Richard held his breath, as if the straining in his lungs would mask the clacking of his shoes on the worn marble floor. The air was musty, as if the house had been breathing the same air for centuries, but it was warm, a welcome change from the frigid air of the rest of the town, and it caressed the tundra of Richard’s skin. As he progressed further into the bowels of the mansion, the door swung shut suddenly behind him, lock clicking into place with a loud _clack. _ Richard stepped forwards with measured footsteps, advancing through the entrance hall quickly, searching for something he couldn’t quite name.

The mansion, he quickly discovered, was a rabbit’s warren of twisting corridors, hallways that lurched this way and that, doors that opened up onto brick walls, stairways that disappeared into thick, deep black voids. In every room, propped up in the corner like an afterthought, was a small brass candelabra. A candelabra that had four lit candles sat in pride of place, flame flickering despite the unmoving air.

He was not alone. That much was certain. It was a certainty that he’d been sure of since the moment he began his ascent, and perhaps, in the deep recesses of his brain, since the moment he set foot onto Krov soil. Even if it weren’t for the flickering yellow in the windows, Richard knew that the mansion, the breathing body amongst the cadaver of the town, held the key to _something. _The same something that made the stench of the town so appealing, the same something that compelled him to pocket the diary he’d found, and the same something that drew him here, up that cliffside, a magnet, helpless.

A scream, blood-curdling and raw, ripped its way through the silence, and then, abruptly, as if nothing had happened, it stopped. Despite every fibre of his being willing him not to investigate, screaming at him to run, to run far, far away and forget about Krov, he didn’t listen. On shaking, reckless legs, Richard walked towards the room where the scream had come from, opened the door, and came face to face with none other than William Denbrough.

William Denbrough’s corpse was sprawled face up on the floor of the room. His face had been twisted into a mask of not quite terror and not quite peace, and the bones in his neck stuck out awkwardly, like someone had wrung him like a damp cloth. Blood was oozing in thick streams from two angry, rapidly bruising puncture wounds on his neck.

“He felt no pain”

Richard, who had been crouched on his knees in despair, slowly rose to his feet.

“He felt no pain. I snapped his neck as easily as a child snaps a twig, he felt nothing”

The voice, metallic and shimmery but human, almost human, spoke with quiet grace from the doorway.

“Wh-who are you?” Richard stuttered, voice gravelly and hoarse, a stark contrast to the velvety smoothness of the stranger.

“You know who I am”

_seek Him seek Him seek Him seek Him seek Him seek Him_

“You’re … You’re – you killed –”

The stranger stepped forwards, and placed a hand on Richard’s shoulder. Even through the layers of his overcoat and shirt, he could feel an icy coldness seeping through the fabric, leaking into his bones. 

“Richard,” the stranger implored, “turn around”

Richard did not turn.

“_Turn”_

“No. How do you know my name?”

“_TURN!” _

Richard turned, spinning on his heels like a top, and was confronted with the face of the most beautiful man he had ever seen. The strangers face, though pallid and pointed, looked as if it had been chiselled from the finest of marble with the careful hands of Pygmalion himself. The man was slightly shorter than Richard, but he stood erect, with his chin jutted forwards, a challenge. He wore a long, sweeping coat made of the thickest looking wool, with a black cravat tied in an elaborate knot around his neck. His hand, that still sat on Richard’s shoulder with a firm grip, was slender with a single, gold ring on the index finger.

“Richard,” the stranger began once again, but Richard cut him off impatiently.

“You know my name. You knew I was coming,” he stated dumbly, and the stranger nodded.

“I do, and I did”

“For how long?”

“For longer than you care to imagine”

“I’m rather imaginative, I’m sure I could –”

“For three centuries, I’ve known of this day,” the stranger said, voice ocean calm, “for three centuries, I’ve felt you, anticipated you, I’ve …” the stranger paused, staring into Richard’s eyes steadily, “I’ve _smelt _you”

Richard snorted. An ugly sort of laugh that escaped his nose without permission.

“Three centuries? Are you insane?”

“Quite the contrary”

“You snapped old Bill’s neck like it was nothing, like you do this sort of thing …” Richard’s voice died in his throat. “_what are you?” _

“My kind have had many names”

When Richard said nothing, the stranger continued.

“Perhaps you’ll know of us as strigoi, lurid beasts who bite and claw and scratch and gnash their awful teeth, or perhaps your father told you stories about the moroi who visit naughty little children under the cover of darkness and drain their bodies of life, or perhaps,” the stranger stopped, a strange, ugly smirk blooming on his mouth, “perhaps, you’ll know of my kind by a different name”

Richard, growing impatient, wrenched his shoulder away from the strangers hand. “Tell me”

“_Vampire” _

The last time he’d run for his life, Richard had been seven years old with a pocket full of stolen candy. This time, he wasn’t being chased by the old woman who ran the corner shop. This time, he wasn’t being chased at all. He had taken off at a screeching run when the stranger had muttered that word, that word that set his teeth on edge. Although he had expected the stranger, the _vampire, _to reach out and grab him, or to charge after him, he could only hear one set of pounding footsteps on the dusty carpet – his own.

Soon, when he’d reached what he thought was the door he’d entered the mansion through, a familiar voice floated into the room, carried on the stale air.

“Do you know how many years I’ve waited? Do you know what it’s like to crave something that doesn’t exist, that will not exist for centuries? Do you know how it feels to smell something so intoxicating, so delicious, so _inviting, _and have to _wait?”_

“Fuck off!” Richard shot back, voice shaking wildly, but he was met with the sound of whooping laughter.

“You’ll be back. You’ll come back to me, eventually. You’ll come straight back, and I’ll let you, just this once, Richard, I’ll let you”

* * *

It took three hours of pacing the grounds of the mansion for Richard to decide to venture back inside. For those three hours, Richard stalked the gardens like a stray cat marking its territory, hackles raised and teeth bared. Something in his gut, deep deep down, was pulling him straight back to the mansion, and straight back to the stranger. It wanted him. Richard had experienced his fair share of lust, longing looks at the blacksmith’s apprentice with the strong arms, letting his eyes linger for too long on the chest of the young woman who taught the children on a Wednesday morning. This was different. This wasn’t lust. This was hunger. This was an insatiable, unquenchable hunger that only abated when he was staring into those watery grey eyes, or when he thought about pressing his body, heaving and needy, against the body of the stranger.

Before he could push the door open, he looked up, up to the top window of the tallest turret, and there he was. Standing in the window, looking down at Richard with apathetic eyes but a wide, manic grin, was the vampire. When Richard pushed his way into the mansion, however, the vampire was standing on the balcony that overlooked the entrance hall.

“It took you less time than I had expected”

“What can I say, I’m decisive when I need to be,” Richard tried to joke, but the words fell to the ground, flat, with a squelch.

“You know, when I smelt you in the mansion for the first time, I thought I was hallucinating”

“Pardon?”

“I had waited for this day for so long, I have been so _patient, _that I did not trust my own nose when you finally arrived”

Unsure of what to say, Richard decided not to say anything at all. This seemed to be the correct answer, as the vampire began to descend the stairs slowly, almost performatively.

“I’ve been so _patient,” _the stranger repeated, “but you’re here now, and my century-long wait has, I suppose, come to an end”

“Your …” Richard muttered, pausing before he continued, reticent to hear the answer. “Your wait? Wait for what?”

“For you, of course”

“Me?”

“You” the vampire nodded.

By this point, the vampire had reached the bottom of the staircase. Richard steeled himself, but the vampire floated straight past him, but not before sending a, “_call me Edward_” in his direction. 

* * *

Edward was, by all accounts, a terrible host. He left Richard standing dumbly in the entrance hall, unsure whether to follow Edward or whether to take off screaming. Eventually, predictably, he followed the vampire down the twisting, turning labyrinth of hallways and into a surprisingly cosy room. There were lit torches hung in metal brackets on the wall, the smell of burning wood hanging comfortingly in the air. In the center of the room was a plush looking velvet couch, upon which Edward was reclined, an Adonis in repose, arm slung lazily behind his head.

“Come sit”

Richard hovered in the doorway, causing Edward to roll his eyes.

“Sit with me, I don’t bite,” he said, before chuckling to himself, “although, I would, you know. If you asked me to”

“What, like you bit William Denbrough and snapped the bones in his neck like sticks?”

Edward hissed out a laugh, stretching his arms behind his head luxuriously like a cat until his back cracked loudly.

“That was entirely different. I had no intention of, uh …”

“Of what?”

“Of turning him”

“Turning him?” Richard parroted, feeling faint once more. Edward, noticing this, rose to his feet.

“I really do insist that you sit. I’ll stand by the window, you do not even have to look at me, should you choose not to”

The couch did look inviting, all soft velvet and squashy cushions, so Richard picked his way over, sitting down on the cushions cautiously, like they might jump up and savage him if he moved too quickly.

“Is there anything you would like to know?” Edward asked, voice flippant and breezy, causing Richard to splutter indignantly.

“_Anything I’d like to know?!” _Richard repeated, “anything I’d like to know about what? Who or what the hell it is you say you are? What I’m doing here? Why it feels like I’m going to vomit out all of my internal organs when I so much as _think_ about leaving this place?”

“Those are all valid questions,” Edward replied lightly.

“Let’s start with the last one, because that’s the only thing keeping me from running away as fast as I can and sending the police in to arrest you for murder”

Something shot across Edward’s face, something that Richard swore looked almost like hurt, but it was gone as soon as it had appeared.

“Your body is, um, well. Your body is bound to mine, and always has been. For centuries, we’ve been … linked, I suppose is the best way to describe it. Linked through a metaphysical bond that I cannot even begin to explain so do not ask me to”

“But –”

“I said do _not,” _Edward warned. “It is far too complicated. Your body is … it knows that mine has … changed”

“Changed?”

“Changed,” Edward confirmed with one short nod. “I suppose we were supposed to be the unlucky ones, the ones destined to be born centuries apart from their partner, but … that changed. I changed”

“Oh, the whole … vampire thing”

Edward flinched. “Yes. Do please be more flippant about it, you know how that _thrills _me”

“I don’t know anything about you,” Richard replied petulantly, but he sank back into the couch, relishing in the feeling of being surrounded by the soft cushions.

“You will. Know anything about me, I mean. You could know _everything _about me, but only if you want it. Only if you want … I shan’t keep you here against your will”

“I can’t leave, I tried to, before, but I couldn’t …”

“Eventually, when we have been sharing the same space long enough, the link will allow you to leave without feeling too sick. You’ll know it, though, for the rest of your days, you will never feel pure comfort again, but you will be able to live a normal life away from here. Away from me”

“And what if, hypothetically, I don’t … I don’t leave. What happens then?”

“Ah, that’s something we’ll talk about when you’re ready, when you’ve decided. For now, we drink”

In a flash, Edward had produced two crystal glasses, and a bottle of syrupy looking red liquid. Richard, who had never been much of a fan of alcohol, took the glass from Edward gingerly.

“Is this …”

“It’s wine, Richard. Wine.”

“I knew that, I was just … checking” Richard admitted guiltily, taking a small sip of the burgundy wine. It was sweet, and tasted like blackcurrant with a woody undertone, and Richard gulped it down happily.

“How long have you lived here?” he asked.

“Would you believe me if I told you it was so long that I have forgotten the exact length of time?”

“I suppose so”

“Well good. I do not remember when I arrived, but I remember when everybody else left”

Richard sucked in a breath, remembering the diary sitting hot and heavy in his coat pocket. “You mean the people of Krov?”

“I do. Even I, an undead creature of the night, get lonely. It is a very human emotion, loneliness”

“You’re not human”

“I was,” Edward spat back, venom dripping from the words. “I was, and I remember it so fondly, so vividly. I remember the crushing isolation, the months and months I spent without talking to another living soul that wasn’t my mother. I remember the hours I spent wishing I had a confidant, someone to share my wishes, hopes, sorrows, dreams with. And you, Richard Tozier, are that. You _supposed _to be that. My ally, my _partner_, and wish all you want that it was not be true, it will change nothing”

“So I’m your, what, your _soulmate?” _

Edward scoffed. “I do not believe in souls, but yes, I suppose the theory is the same”

“Only I could end up with a fucking _vampire _for a soulmate”

Edward hissed again, teeth bared sharp in his mouth. “I may have a heart that no longer beats in my chest but I am not immune to your barbed words, Tozier”

With that, Edward stood from where he was perched on the window sill and stalked out of the room, air buzzing in his wake.


	2. Chapter 2

The rain hammered against the window with the force of a thousand raging fists but all Edward could do was sigh. The bedroom was oppressively warm. It was always so, even in the darkest depths of winter, the sort of stifling heat that made your back sweat and your brain ache with fatigue. The sound of the crackling fire mixed with the downpour outside created a heady mixture of noise that had become as normal to Edward as the sound of his own breathing. Any moment now, his mother would bustle in clutching a vial of swampy green liquid that – after pinning him down with her strong, meaty arms – she’d drip-drop onto his tongue, at the behest of her physician. Edward had never spoken to this physician, he hadn’t even _seen _him, and yet this man charged his mother a hefty sum for his time and sent her scuttling off to the best apothecary in the region for various foul tinctures. Edward was not sick. He knew that, because his heart didn’t hurt, his gut sat passively, and his head was clear. His mother, however, with her shrill tea-kettle voice, insisted that he _was _sick, that he had _always been _sick, and that he would _continue_ to be sick for the rest of his days.

Francis Kaspbrak, baron of Krov and close ally of the King, had been felled like an aged oak in a civil feud between two warring factions that ended abruptly when Francis sank to his knees, headless. Despite having met the man only twice in his lifetime, Edward had wept for him, wept for the man he barely knew, wept at the command of his mother who loomed over him like an unforgiving God. What could be recovered of his father had been buried in a grave marked ‘_God have mercy upon mine soul’ _and Edward had stared at the words for a very long time.

It was after his father had died, after the feud had died down to a gentle simmer, that the first people began to disappear. A child here, a young man here, a woman snatched from her bed in the dead of night by an preternatural hand, never to be seen again. Edward listened to the gossiping servants as they rushed around the mansion, whispering in hushed, frantic tones.

_“The _ _Andrei boy went missing last night”_

_“Three more people have disappeared over the last month!”_

_“Something must be taking them”_

_“Someone must be taking them”_

_“Lock your doors”_

_“Lock your doors”_

_“Lock your doors”_

* * *

After the tenth child went missing, the door of Edward’s small bedroom was locked behind him for good. Those four walls, decorated in elaborate tapestries of battles of yore, became Edward’s entire world. His mother, frantic with an anxiety that gnawed at her bones, locked him in his bedroom on a blustery Tuesday morning and Edward, naïve and eight years old, did not challenge her. The only company he had was the piano that sat in the corner of the room, that sung for him when he asked with careful fingers. Six days and seven nights Edward remained in the torrid bedroom until, after enough pleading and a promise that he would never _ever _leave the mansion, Edward’s territory was expanded to include the other rooms of the mansion. The door leading to the sprawling mansion grounds remained bolted shut, leaving Edward to pace back and forth in front of it, a caged jaguar craving the feeling of the sun on his back. He managed to strike up friendly, but entirely superficial, relationships with the servants, and they told him tales of the end-of-summer blackberries hanging on the bushes, bloated and plump, and how the air smelt after an autumn downpour. Try as he might, however, the door remained locked tight, only opening when his mother was _sure _Edward was asleep, allowing supplies to be snuck into the mansion in the dead of night.

“It’s too dangerous, Eddie. Far too dangerous for you, a young, fragile thing. A precious thing, _my _precious thing. You must remain behind these doors where I can protect you,” she’d insist, wringing her hands.

“But mother! I –”

“No! No buts, no ifs, no questions. You remain here, where you belong”

It was no use. Regardless of how often he’d mither, how often he’d plead or beg, the answer was always the same.

“_It’s not safe, it’s not safe, it’s not safe"_

* * *

Edward remained under lock and key for over a decade, but on his nineteenth summer, eleven years after he’d last felt the summer breeze wick the sweat off his sun-scorched brow, he escaped. The day he chose was entirely unremarkable in every way, apart from the fact he’d woken up with a curious feeling in the deepest depths of his gut. It wasn’t so much an ache as it was a bizarre tugging sensation, hunger but not quite, nausea but not really. It felt like craving, like he couldn’t be, would never be, satisfied until he’d greedily consumed _something, _but the something remained hazy and masked, and he couldn’t quite place it. Despite his tender belly, Edward blindly made the decision that today would be the day he would feel the soil of the town crunch under his boots for the first time in many, many years.

Sonia Kaspbrak was a very, _very _heavy sleeper. Her guttural snores echoed nosily throughout the mansion, drowning out the peaceful silence, but, fortunately for Edward, they blanketed his careful movements, to such an extent that he managed to move through the entire mansion practically soundlessly.

Earlier that day, Edward had snatched the key from underneath his mother’s nose. She had been fussing over him, inspecting the whites of his eyes for any signs of pestilence when he’d stuck a hand out, lightning fast, and snatched the key from where it hung around her neck on a thin piece of thread. She hadn’t noticed, and he’d disguised his jerky movement as a sneeze. With the key clasped between his thumb and forefinger, freedom felt leaden to Edward, but he pushed on, willing his trembling feet forward, forward, _forward. _He reached the door, wrenched the bolts back as quietly as humanly possible, and then, with a shaking hand, thrust the key into the lock, and turned it.

The door swung open.

* * *

Krov was silent. The air in the mansion was thick and cloying, and it coated the inside of Edward’s throat and nose like syrup, but the air out here, the air that danced between the trees, rustling their leaves as they greeted Edward, was fresh and new. Edward left the sprawling mansion behind, skipping as fast as he dared down the steep incline that would lead him into the heart of the town. The mansion, getting smaller and smaller as Edward ran, shouted out to him with silent screams, but Edward ignored it. He knew that his mother wouldn’t wake up until the first beams of sunlight began to stream through her windows, and that he had about seven hours to explore the town.

What sounded like a large stick snapped beneath Edward’s foot and he jumped, lurching forwards wildly, spinning his arms in an aborted attempt to keep himself upright, but it was no use. He went down, head tumbling over heels, clothes ripped, face covered in thick, red clay dust.

“_Fuck!” _he hissed, a word he heard his mother use occasionally when the servants left the door open, or when she’d forgotten to give Edward his swampy medicine.

He stood, trying to brush as much of the red dust off of himself as possible. The thing that had broken under his foot was smallish and powder-white, and Edward picked it up curiously, before throwing it to the ground with all of his might.

A bone.

It was a bone. A bone small enough to belong to a child, perhaps, and long enough to be a thigh bone, or perhaps a forearm.

“_Edward,”_ a voice hissed from the undergrowth, “_Edward, oh Edwaaaard! Where is your mother now? Where is your captor now?” _

Edward stilled, hand still extended stupidly. The voice continued.

“_Oh what a brave boy you are, finally wrenching yourself from your mother’s womb. The world is ready for you, Edward! It’s been ready a long, long time. It’s hungry now, Edward. Ravenous, starving. You’ve made us wait, Edward!”_

The voice was thin, watery almost, and it shook violently with every word, like whoever was talking was trying desperately not to erupt into raucous laughter.

“_Edwaaaaard!” _

“Who are you?! What do you want from me?” Edward shouted into the blackness, and the darkness roared back,

“_EVERYTHING_!”

Edward braced himself to flee, but a hand attached itself to his ankle before he could move. The hand was huge, and wrapped itself easily around Edward’s calf. Edward looked down, and was met by a manic, too-wide smile.

“_Edwaaaaard!”_

The hand belonged to a man, or rather, something that looked like it had once been a man, a long long time ago. Now, his skull was misshapen and soft looking, like with one almighty thump Edward could cave it in. His face was ugly and pointed, with cheekbones that jutted painfully out of its face. The mouth, bared in a smile, was full of brown, stained teeth, but the canines, four of them, were inhumanly large and pointed like daggers, like fangs. Edward tried desperately to shake the hand from his ankle, to kick it from him with his other foot, but it was no use. The hand remained.

“_What a strong little boy you are!” _the thing mocked, “_how braaave you are! Keep struggling, Edward. Keep going! Keep going!” _

“Ahcros!”

Another voice boomed from behind the tree, before a woman emerged. She looked human, all too human, the flushed pink of her skin a stark contrast to the greyish-green skin of the thing attached to Edward’s leg.

“Let him go,” the woman commanded in a voice as smooth as honey, “leave him!”

The thing let go, scuttling on all fours over to where the woman was stood. Edward, paralysed in fear, just stared at her. She was beautiful, with a long swoop of black hair falling down her back, pushed off of her face with a large red ribbon.

“Do not mind him, he has been this way for so long, long enough to forget his manners,” the woman said, gesturing at the thing at her feet. The thing was chattering to itself, grinning wildly.

“Who – what – what are – who –” Edward stuttered, and the woman laughed. As she laughed, Edward spotted four sharp, dagger-like teeth in her mouth but, unlike the thing by her feet, her teeth were bone-white.

“We have waited for you. Lucifer knows how many times we have tried to get into that blasted mansions of yours, how much time we have _wasted _trying to get at you. If only we knew you’d scamper out on your own, if only we knew we just had to let you walk straight into our arms_” _

“I’m – I need to go home. Let me go, and I’ll say nothing of this, my mother won’t know, she won’t –”

“Your mother? Oh, your _mother, _of course,” the woman shrugged flippantly. “She will do nothing. She will mourn you, perhaps. Perhaps she will weep for you, but she will forget. They always forget”

“Forget?”

“Yes. They forget, grief is such a … wasteful thing. She won’t miss you half as much as you think she will”

“Why would she miss me? Where am I going?”

“Where they all go, in the end. Every thing is just living to die, Edward, surely you knew this. But _you, _dear child, _you _are going somewhere different. See, you wasted my time, which is such a precious thing. You caused me _trouble, _Edward, and we can’t have that”

“What are you talking about?!” Edward demanded, growing increasingly impatient and terrified in equal measure.

“Oh, you poor naïve little thing,” the woman sneered, striding towards Edward. When she reached him, she gripped his head and snapped it backwards so that his neck was bared, strained and pulsing with life.

“_Drink_”

With that, the woman tightened her grip in Edwards hair, presented her arm out in front of him, and, with unearthly force, she thrust Edward’s head forwards, down towards her arm, down with such power that his teeth sunk deep into her ashy skin. A cold, thick liquid filled his mouth quickly, and Edward gagged forcefully. The woman did not release her hold on his head, only laughed. The blood was foul, and tasted like spoiled meat; rotten and almost sweet with decay. After what felt like days, the woman wrenched Edward’s head back, and, whilst he was still blood-drunk, she sank her own teeth into Edward’s neck. Howling with pain, Edward gnashed his teeth and squirmed beneath the woman’s grasp, but she did not relent, did not release, just continued to feed. His heart betrayed him, as with every pulse, every beat, it pushed more and more of his blood into the woman’s mouth.

“_RELEASE HIM!” _

* * *

It took Edward nearly five-hundred years to finally accept his changing body. His mother died five months after he disappeared, citing heartbreak as the cause as she moaned and writhed on her deathbed. Edward snuck in, once or twice, and watched her sleep, snorting and snuffling as she tossed this way and that.

The mansion that had been Edward’s prison soon became his cell once more. He locked himself away in the mansion, which was quickly forgotten by the rest of the town, dismissed and feared for the bad luck that it brought upon those that lived there.

“_The young master of the house died horribly, because the lady of the mansion went insane and slaughtered her son in cold blood! It’s bad luck, it’s bad luck, it’s bad luck” _

The young master of the house did die horribly, and lived, for five-hundred years, in solitude. In solitude, until on the 3rd January 1450 he awoke to find a pair of eyes staring up at the mansion.

* * *

Patrick Hockstetter soon proved himself to be indispensable. Before Patrick, Edward would find himself plunging his body into starvation mode regularly, until hunger clouded his rationality and he’d stalk into the town to prey on whichever poor, unfortunate soul he came across first.

The first time Patrick and Edward had talked, Edward had snarled like a cornered animal but Patrick, wide-eyed and curious, hadn’t run away.

“A creature of the night, then? Are you going to bite me?”

Confused, and a little scared of the boy who did not appear scared of him, Edward blinked.

“I – I don’t know”

“If I asked you to turn me, would you?”

“Absolutely not”

They’d struck up a curious sort of friendship. Patrick would visit Edward in the dead of night, and they’d talk, for a while, before sitting in something close to amicable silence, Edward tinkling the keys on the piano, Patrick watching him with those same curious eyes. When Patrick had first offered, Edward hadn’t known how to respond.

“I’ll get them for you, if you like”

“Get who?” Edward had asked, distracted by his fingers skating across the ivory keys of his beloved piano.

“The people – your food. I’ll get them for you, if you want”

Edward’s finger hit the wrong note and the piano petulantly spat out an ugly, disjointed sound.

“What do you mean, get them?”

“I can bring them here, you know. The people, the bad people of the town. You won’t have to risk coming down anymore, you won’t have to eat the good people”

If Edward’s heart still beat within his chest it would have jumped. He’d spoken to Patrick at length about this, about how much he hated being forced by the hunger that squirmed deep in his belly like a tapeworm to consume, to devour, to kill those who did not deserve their fate. The prospect of having Patrick bring him only those who did deserve a grisly end at the hands of a supernatural beast soothed this self-loathing somewhat.

“You’d do this? For me? You’d do that?”

“Of course, Edward! We are friends, aren’t we? Friends do _anything _for each other”

Thus, it began. Every two weeks, Patrick would drag a wriggling sack up the hill, movements disguised by darkness, and Edward would meet him outside the mansion, practically vibrating with anticipation.

“This one’s a rapist,” Patrick would tell him, or “this one killed a man,” or maybe, “this one has been stealing from the Church for _years”_ and Edward’s feeding ritual would begin.

When he was satiated and suitably blood-drunk, he’d barely notice Patrick staring at him with unblinking, dinner-plate eyes.

This symbiotic relationship lasted for nearly a decade before everything changed. On a seemingly normal Tuesday, after Patrick had dragged the latest body up the hill, he asked Edward a question he had only ever asked once before.

“If I asked you to turn me, would you?”

After wiping his mouth roughly with the back of his hand, smearing blood over his cheek, Edward sat up.

“Turn you? Why on earth would I do that?”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t – the only other ones I’ve met – ones like me, they were … feral. They were _beasts. _I don’t trust them”

“You trust me,” Patrick shot back, lightning fast.

“Yes, but … but …” Edward scrabbled for the words, for the reasons that he shouldn’t turn Patrick, for the reasons that he should live in isolation forever. As he thought, as he wrestled with himself, Patrick just stared at him.

“I can make the decision easier for you,” Patrick said, voice honey’d, “I can make it _much _easier for you”

“How?”

“I can tell you that if you do not turn me, if you send me down that hill still human, still _pathetically _mortal, that will be the last time you ever see me. Turn me, and you’ll have an ally for all eternity, do not turn me and I’ll leave you here to starve, or be driven to torment by hunger to the extent that you are compelled to feed on the innocent people of this town. It really is an easy decision, Edward”

The heavens opened, and rain began to pour heavily, soaking both men almost instantly. Patrick was smirking now, flashing his teeth at Edward confidently, as if he had already grown fangs, as if Edward had already agreed. Perhaps he had. The idea of an ally, someone to rely on for all eternity, was certainly an attractive prospect. Whilst this side of Patrick, this manipulative side that forced Edward’s hand, was new, and rather worrying, this worry was dwarfed by the loneliness that chewed at Edward’s gut.

“It’ll hurt”

“What will?”

“The – the change. It’ll hurt … it hurts”

Patrick grinned, and a small part of Edward, a very very small part that he tried to ignore, knew this was a terrible idea.

* * *

Edward had never changed anyone else before. He knew how to do it, could remember from his own change, but actually having to do it, having to be the one to lead the process, was more daunting than anything else he’d ever had to do. Patrick stood before him, eyes glued to Eddie’s arm.

“I have to bite you?”

“Yes. You need to – you need to consume my blood. A fair amount of it. And then I – “

“You bite me,” Patrick said, a statement, not a question.

“Yes. Then I bite you,” Edward replied.

The worry that he wouldn’t be able to stop, that he’d feed and feed and feed from Patrick until he’d grown fat and corpulent off of Patrick’s blood until the other had been drained of life entirely flashed across his brain, but he ignored it as best he could.

After a few beats, Patrick shrugged breezily, before sinking his teeth into the fleshy part of Edward’s forearm. Edward grimaced at the feeling of Patrick suckling at the wound his teeth had made, and tapped his foot impatiently as Patrick drank his fill. Patrick pulled back from Edward’s arm with an slurping noise, wiping his mouth frantically.

“What now?” he asked, eyes wide. He looked drunk. Edward rolled his eyes, before grasping Patrick’s forehead in one hand and the back of his neck with another.

“What now? Now, I kill you,” Edward growled, before attacking Patrick’s neck.

Patrick howled in pain, trying to strike at Edward with his flailing arms, but Edward swatted at him like a cat bats a fly.

Soon, after a minute or two, Patrick began to slump in Edward’s grasp, and before long, he had passed out completely, chest heaving up and down rapidly. It took more self-control than Edward thought he possessed to wrench himself away from Patrick’s body, and leave it on the floor, to die. It took about half an hour – half an hour which Edward spent sitting on the floor next to Patrick’s body – for Patrick to stop breathing. He was dead. Edward picked up the body, with the ease of someone picking up a doll, and moved him inside. He placed Patrick’s body on the couch, and waited.

* * *

Vampirism was nothing like the stories said, Edward soon learnt after his own turning. There was nothing glamorous, nothing enchanting about it. Nothing romantic, nothing sensual. All that vampirism was was a constant, crippling hunger. Edward had come to refer to it as his disease, a pestilence, a _parasite,_ that he was forced to co-exist with in perpetuity. It took five days for Patrick to wake up from the eternal sleep of death and three days more for him to muster the energy to speak.

“Edward?”

“It is done”

“I am – I am – you made me -- ”

“I did,” Edward interrupted, and Patrick grinned, revealing his newly grown fangs.

“What now?”

Edward sighed. “Now, we feed you”

With that, Patrick’s eyes darkened. He stood up, and Edward expected his legs to shake, to watch Patrick comically drag his still-half-dead body across the room, but instead, Patrick sprinted out of the room on legs that looked as strong as tree trunks.

Edward blinked once, twice, three times, before he gave chase.

It took Edward almost an hour to find Patrick, but eventually he found him in a house on the outskirts of the town, crouched over the still twitching body of a young boy.

“Patrick,” Edward cautioned, voice low and dangerous, “step away”

“You have no fucking _idea _how good this feels, Edward,” Patrick babbled, voice high and shaky, “this is better than the best fucking I ever got, better than all of the food in the land, better than – better than _everything_”

“Step _away!” _Edward warned again, taking steady steps over to where Patrick was crouched, slurping obscenely at the boy’s neck at random intervals.

“You’ve been eating random people, you know, I just thought you should know, it’s been totally random people this whole time”

“Pardon?”

“All those people I fed to you, I just brought you whoever I could find, whoever was wandering in the street at that time. You probably didn’t eat even _one _bad person, Edward, _Eddie_, how _funny _is that?” Patrick gibbered, laughing as he spoke. The boy had stopped twitching.

“You’re lying,” Edward said, but his voice was shaking slightly now, just barely, just enough so that when Patrick looked up, eyes huge and wild, he laughed.

“_Eddie, _you are quite stupid. Did you _honestly _think there were that many awful people in such a small town? Enough to give you fresh blood every two weeks for nearly ten _years? _Surely you cannot be that gullible”

“I thought … maybe you were getting them from … I thought”

“You _knew,” _Patrick brayed, standing up now, eyes and teeth glittering, “you _knew _and you let me do it anyway. You’re a _monster, _Edward, you know exactly what you are”

“Stop”

“_MONSTER!” _Patrick screamed, and then, suddenly, he was on the floor, pinned to the wooden boards by an invisible force.

“I told you to step _away,” _Edward barked, eyes pinned to Patrick’s neck. “I cannot trust you, you are just like _them” _

Edward placed a broad hand around Patrick’s throat, and squeezed.

* * *

Killing a sheep was much easier than killing a human. Much quicker, too. Edward had become very skilled at snapping their necks quick enough so they dropped like flies, quick enough so it was painless. He always chose the old looking ones, the ones with limps or the ones with large, bulbous tumours growing off their bodies. Never the ones with lambs. He’d snap the sheep’s neck, hoist it onto his shoulder, and march it back to his mansion, careful not to leave any trace of his visit.

He’d had Patrick locked in the cellar for nearly a century. For over ninety years, he’d had the fledgling vampire shut in the darkness with nothing but the slowly rotting bones of dead sheep for company. When he’d knocked Patrick out with the powers he still didn’t really understand, he’d made the split-second decision to lock him up in the cellar, a decision inspired by his mother. He hadn’t thought about Sonia for decades, centuries even, but when he was throwing Patrick’s slumbering body into the room, and slamming the large, metal door behind him, her moon-round face came swimming into view.

“_Lock him up, Eddie-bear! Lock him up and throw away the key” _

And so he did.

Seven silent months passed, and Edward could almost have convinced himself he had forgotten about his unwelcome house guest, but then, the screaming began. In the middle of the day, when Edward was deep in slumber, great echoing screeches echoed around the mansion for hours, and Edward knew where they were coming from. Of course, it was Patrick screaming, his starving body rejecting the vampirism, trying desperately to keep itself alive. Knowing that it would take another year at _least _for Patrick to finally enter a comatose state from which he would never awake, and knowing that that year would be spent listening to the screams and squeals of a starving vampire, Edward decided to feed him. Patrick remained locked in Edward’s cellar for ninety-years, feasting on rotten meat, his small sliver of sanity and rationality rotting along with his body, until he was nothing more than rabid hunger and distilled rage.

But this didn’t last.

Edward had been lugging the carcass of Patrick’s next meal down the stone steps when he’d spotted it, in the centre of the room, where he’d left it exactly three weeks before. The now decaying corpse of the sheep Patrick should have turned to a marshy goo. It was there, still in possession of all its blood.

Edward dropped the carcass he was carrying, and sprinted down the rest of the stairs. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he hissed out a curse.

“_SHIT!”_

There was a gaping hole in the wall. There were claw marks in the stone surrounding the hole, claw marks and fragments of skin and smudges of blood, and it became painfully obvious to Edward that Patrick, in his mania, had scratched and scratched and scratched at the wall for decades until it had crumbled beneath his fingertips and he had escaped. For the second time in his life, Edward took off at a sprint down the hill after his monstrous creation.

By the time he’d reached the bottom of the slope, Edward knew that only one human life remained. The smell of death hung in the air like smoke, seeping out of every house, every window, every crack in every building. He could smell Patrick, too. He could smell Patrick’s rage, Patrick’s mania, Patrick’s hunger. It stank. Edward made his way over to where Patrick’s stench was strongest, picking his way over the corpses of the townspeople. The house where he found Patrick was small and sad, just one tiny bed in the corner, upon which an old man slept, or rather, was pretending to sleep.

Edward stood over the old man, wheezing slightly, the stench of blood overpowering, taunting him, _take a bite take a bite take a bite, _but he resisted.

The man opened his eyes.

As soon as the man’s eyes opened, Patrick leapt forwards from the shadows. With a yell, Edward span on his heels, and pinned Patrick against the wall with nothing but his eyes and the force that exploded from deep within him. The force he didn’t understand, the force he couldn’t name, but the force that was getting more powerful with each day.

“Let me go! Edward, _Eddie, _we could have it all, you know. You and me, we could –” Patrick’s sentence died in his mouth, and was replaced by incoherent babbling, and gnashes of teeth. Edward could feel something in Patrick fighting against him, something that was growing stronger, and stronger, until suddenly, without warning, Patrick wrenched himself free of Edward’s gaze and sprinted towards him.

Edward flinched, expecting Patrick to charge into him, but the impact never came. Instead, Patrick sprinted straight past Edward, and plunged his hand deep into the old man’s chest cavity. The man died instantly, a flame extinguished by a puff of air. Patrick wrenched his hand out of the man’s chest, brandishing his still-warm heart like a trophy.

“See! With my power and your brains, we could – we could –”

Patrick never finished his sentence. Edward could feel rage bubbling up within him, his fury not only directed at Patrick for massacring the entire town, but also at himself for creating the behemoth that stood before him, face covered in the blood and innards of hundreds of Krov’s innocent people. With a brutality that he had never felt within himself, Edward wrapped his palm around Patrick’s face, lifted him off the ground, and pinned his head against the stone wall. Patrick, now feral with panic-infused anger, began to scratch feverishly at Edward’s body, leaving great gashes in his clothing and skin, but Edward didn’t give, didn’t breathe, didn’t speak. Edward just stood, stoically, bearing the brunt of Patrick’s attacks, before he squeezed his hand, and popped Patrick’s head like a child pops a balloon.

* * *

Edward burnt Patrick’s body. He sent it down to hell, committed it to the inferno, in a blaze of flames and hissed curses. Now dejected and entirely, utterly, abandoned, Edward returned to his solitude with his tail between his legs. The entire town of Krov had died. It had died, screaming, at the hands of a monster that he alone had created. He was determined that he would never again create another monster, nor would he forge any sort of relationship with a human being again.

Two-hundred years later, Edward awoke one night with an all too familiar tugging sensation in his stomach. He had felt this tugging, this hunger, once in his life before. The day he’d been caught by the triad of vampires, the day he had died, he’d awoken with the same bizarre feeling in his belly. Edward dismissed it as pure coincidence, until, for five weeks in a row, he awoke with the same sensation bubbling in his gut. This feeling lingered, persisting for hours into the night, every night, as Edward stalked the castle in a rage.

Soon, the stomach ache was accompanied by bizarre dreams, dreams of a hazy figure that would speak to him in a voice too quiet to be heard. Then, the smell came. An enticing smell that danced in the air like snowflakes, that filtered through his skin, intoxicating his every pore until he craved nothing in the world so much as that smell. As the decades passed, the smell grew stronger, the dreams grew clearer and then suddenly, in late 1892, Richard Tozier began stumbling into Krov, head pounding, and Edward grew frantic with anticipation.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI: this work now contains smut, and the rating has been updated accordingly.

“_I may have a heart that no longer beats in my chest but I am not immune to your barbed words, Tozier._”

Richard shrugged, and watched Edward leave the room. The alcohol that swam in his stomach rapidly began to turn his mind foolish. He stood up, half intending to follow the sulking vampire out of the room, but instead found himself wandering over to the decanter of wine, and he poured himself another large glass. And then another, and another and another until he found himself lying prostrate on the floor, arms slung above his head clumsily, laughing at something he couldn’t quite explain.

An hour later, or perhaps two, Richard couldn’t be sure, the door creaked open and the sound of heavy footsteps filtered into the room. Richard opened his eyes, and saw Edward hovering over him, eyebrows knitted and face scrunched in an expression of hybrid concern-surprise.

“You’re still here,” Edward said plainly, leaning down to gently pry the glass from between Richard’s fingers. 

“My wine! You can’t take my wine, that’s --” Richard hiccupped, “that’s not very nice.”

“I thought you would have left, I assumed you’d --”

“Where would I have gone? I don’t --” Richard hiccupped again, “I don’t know where anyone is, you killed them all!” 

At that, Edward jumped back slightly, releasing the very gentle grasp he had on Richard’s hand, leaving it to flop to the ground with a loud thwack.

“No! No, no,” Richard said, in an attempt to backtrack, “I mean, you ate them? Is that, is that better? Ate?”

Edward chuckled, a deep, syrupy sound that sent a jolt of static up Richard’s spine, setting the tiny hairs on his arm on end. 

“I suppose you are correct, I did, _technically, _consume _some _of them. You are a bizarre little thing, aren’t you.”

“Little?!” Richard gasped indignantly, and rolled onto his side before pushing himself up. He wobbled on his legs like a new-born deer, but Edward’s arm shot out, and grasped him around the waist. “I’m taller than you! _Much _taller than you, actually.”

“Careful. Yes, yes, fine. Not little, you’re very --”

“_You’re _little, you know. The littlest vampire. Were people really scared of you?”

“Terrified,” Edward replied, solemnly, and helped Richard stumble back towards the couch.

“I wouldn’t be scared of you -- I mean, I’m _not _scared of you, I’m just --”

“Just what?”

“Confused, and a little bit --” Richard yawned, “a little bit tired.”

“Quite right, it’s nearly nightfall. You must rest.”

“Hey, hey why -- why aren’t you asleep? Don’t vampires have to sleep during the day? Isn’t that sort of your whole deal?”

“_My whole deal?_” Edward parroted, amused. “Yes, well. I suppose that is usually _our whole deal, _but, at this present moment my body uh -- well, it doesn’t want to sleep.”

“Oh. What does it want to do?” Richard asked, and watched curiously as Edward stepped away from him, just barely, before his eyes darkened.

“The bond, between us, is so powerful, so strong, that even though we barely know each other, my body wants to -- do other things. To -- to you.” Edward said, gesturing vaguely at Richard, who pulled one of the cushions up to his neck.

“No, not -- not those things”

“No, Edward, I don’t -- I’m not -- I don’t want to --”

“Richard, look at me,” Edward implored, sitting down next to Richard on the couch, and grasping both of Richard’s hands in his. “I would never, _will _never, do anything that you don’t want me to. I’m not --” Edward dropped Richard’s hands, and stood back up, “I’m not a monster”

“I didn’t say you were, I just… This whole thing. It’s _bizarre_. I’m flushed with alcohol and twice as stupid as I normally am, and this, well, this isn’t something you just get _used _to”

“I am aware of that,” Edward snapped, before rubbing a hard across his face harshly. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to snap at you. This is a lot to process, for _both_ of us. You need to rest, please let me help you to your room”

Richard didn’t protest. He let Edward slot his arms around his shoulders, and let himself be hauled to his feet. They walked slowly through the twisting corridors, Richard’s legs trembling under his own weight.

“This place is too big for just you, Eds.”

“Eds?”

“Edward, y’know, your name. It’s too long, and I’m too -- too drunk to say it. So now, you are Eds.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Yes you do,” Richard insisted, poking Edward on the cheek, “You’re Eds, the littlest vampire”

“Stop calling me that!”

“What? Eds? Or little?”

“Both!” Edward groaned, and he swotted at Richard’s finger that was still pushed into the soft swell of his cheek.

“Fine, fine. No Eds, and no little. You can be _Edward the Terrible, Edward the Undeadward, Edward the Blood-Thirsty, _or --”

“Eddie.”

“Pardon?”

“You can call me Eddie. That’s what -- My mother used to call me that.” Edward – _Eddie _– said, and he pushed Richard gently through the large door at the end of the corridor. 

“Eddie, huh? Well -- I’m _Richie, _nice to meetcha,” Richie said, sticking his hand out. Eddie stared at it blankly, before gingerly taking it in his own.

“Nice to meet you, _Richie.” _

* * *

A strange, ethereal noise woke Richie that night, a noise that floated through the mansion, dancing in and out of each of the rooms like smoke. It was a beautiful sound, a siren's call to Richie’s restless soul, and it tugged at him, dug its claws into his flesh, deep into his gut, and it _tugged. _

Despite still being in the throes of his alcohol-fuelled stupor, Richard hauled his legs over the side of the large bed, feet landing flat on the floor with a dull thud. The sound grew louder, and louder still, until it was practically screaming, as if the house itself was howling some imagined pain that Richie couldn’t understand. 

Before he could convince his leaden feet to move, to go in search of the origin of the noise, Richie’s head began to pound with such ferocity that he fell back, and was consumed by the insatiable appetite of sleep.

* * *

When the morning sun began to pour into the bedroom, Richie awoke with no recollection of the haunting lament that had woken him in the dead of night. Whilst his memories did not remain, the violent pounding of his head did, accompanied by a swirling tempest in his gut that pressed on his stomach and threatened to send him sprinting to the bathroom. 

A brisk knock on the door spiked Richie’s heart-rate, before a cautious voice called out,

“Richard? I mean -- Richie? Have you woken yet? It’s nearly noon”

Memories of the night before flooded back to Richie, exacerbating his already tender head.

“Yes, yes, I am awake. I’ll -- What do you want me to do? I mean, what are we doing? What -- What’s the plan?”

Eddie snickered from behind the door, a raspy, rattish sort of sound.

“I _want _you to come downstairs, when you are modest and ready. You insisted I leave the room post haste last night because, and I quote, _I sleep butt naked, Eds, butt naked. _I have some food you can eat to help settle your stomach”

“Food?” Richie called out, “Do you mean _food _food or, um …”

“I mean _food _food, you oaf. I’m not going to force feed you _blood, _if that is what concerns you”

“No, I didn’t, well, yes, I suppose I was rather concerned”

Richie stumbled to his feet, ignoring the lusty beckoning of the plush, downy bedding, and he began to shove and wiggle his uncoordinated limbs into the clothes he had been wearing the day before. “I am modest, if you want to come in, you can”

Immediately, and before Richie had managed to properly get the undershirt over his head, Eddie burst into the room, eyes trained steadily on Richie’s pale, and exposed, chest.

“Oh, I mean -- _nearly _modest,” Richie stuttered, pulling the shirt down. 

“Yes, well,” Eddie said, voice ocean-calm, “you may follow me down, I fear you may get lost on the way to the kitchens”

Without another word, Eddie stalked out of the bedroom, but not before Richie saw the faintest hints of a flush paint his cheeks.

True to his word, Eddie lead Richie down a rabbit’s warren of labyrinthine corridors and stairways that twisted round and round like old, gnarled tree roots. The kitchen was hidden away in the bowels of the house, at the end of what Richie imagined to be the longest corridor in the world, followed by a descent down a seemingly never ending stone staircase. Finally, Eddie stopped in front of an inconspicuous looking door, and pushed it open, revealing the biggest kitchen Richie had ever seen. The gas stove was lit, and a large copper pot was sat on it, bubbling away, and the smell of cooking vegetables had filled the air.

“Vegetables?” Richie asked, and he watched as Eddie walked over to the pot, and began to stir.

“Yes, vegetables. You need the goodness after last night, you drank far too much”

“Well forgive me for panicking after being told that, one, I was in the presence of a creature of the night and, two, that said creature of the night was bound to my soul through a sort of metaphysical force that ‘_I couldn’t even understand so don’t ask,’” _Richie mimicked, hanging back in the doorway. 

Eddie rolled his eyes. “You’re difficult.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Do you want any of this, or not?”

“Depends. What is it?”

“It’s a vegetable stew, one of the only meals that my mother used to prepare for me herself. It’s called --”

“Ghiveci,” Richie interrupted, with a grin that Eddie returned.

“Yes! Do you know it?”

“Yes, my father used to bring me bowl after bowl of it when I was taken ill, and sometimes I’d feign sickness just so he’d make it for me.”

“Your father? Are you close with him?” Eddie asked, as he spooned the stew into two large bowls.

“Yes, very much so. I -- I suppose he will be worried about me.”

“Perhaps,” was all Eddie said in response, setting down one of the bowls in front of Richie. “Now, eat.”

Richie ate. The stew was good, a hearty, meaty broth with large chunks of tender vegetables floating in it, and, much to Richie’s bemusement, Eddie was slurping it up with an enthusiasm that matched his own.

“So,” Richie began, “you can -- you can still eat, uh, human food?”

Mid-way through lifting a spoonful of tender potato to his mouth, Eddie let the vegetable slop back into the bowl with a splash. 

“_Richard. _This is growing tiresome”

“What?! I’m not trying to offend you, I’m just -- curious”

“I have no problem with your curiosity, the more you learn now, the better, I suppose, but _must _you insist on drawing the line between you and I so harshly?”

Richie blinked.

“I shall not ask anything else of you, I will not ask you to stay, I will not ask you to like me, but do please stop calling everything I am not, everything I cannot do, human. I am acutely, painfully, aware of what I am. I do not need you to remind me.”

The asparagus stalk turned sour in Richie’s mouth, and he swallowed, but a lump remained petulantly lodged in his throat. Eddie, sat across from him, was hunched over his own bowl of rapidly cooling stew. He wouldn’t look up at Richie, and continued to solemnly spoon his food into his mouth.

“Eddie?"

No response, just the clinking of cutlery against china.

“Eddie? Please don’t ignore me.”

More clinking of cutlery, this time accompanied by obnoxious slurping.

“Eddie I’m _sorry, _you’re not -- you’re not a monster.”

“How do you know?” Eddie spat, finally looking up at Richie with wild eyes. “How do you know? You have no idea _who _I am, or _what _I am. What I’ve _done. _Now you’re here, because -- because I didn’t _die _like I was supposed to, and now it’s all… it’s all wrong”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“The bond.” Eddie said, plainly, “That metaphysical bond I said I wouldn’t explain to you. The reason I said that, the reason I wouldn’t tell you, is because it’s my fault it’s like this, that the bond is so … concentrated”

“Concentrated? I’m lost, Eds.”

Eddie sighed, pushed the bowl away and cradled his head in his hands.

“I didn’t die like I was supposed to because I was turned. Those _motherfuckers _turned me, and then I didn’t die. Most people, they don’t meet the person they’re bonded to. They live thousands of years apart, or even if they are born in compatible eras, they never meet. One lives in China and the other in England. That’s how it usually is. But ours, our bond, it’s wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“Wrong,” Eddie confirmed with a short nod of his head. “I didn’t die, so the bond became … stronger. More concentrated. It caused those headaches you get, and it drives me wild with … a sort of craving. A need.”

“I’m still lost, how exactly is that your fault?” Richie said, leaning forwards until he could, if he tried, grab Eddie’s hand in his. 

“I’m the one that got turned, I’m the one that didn’t die,” Eddie said, staring at Richie as if the answer was obvious, as if his immortality was his fault, his burden to bare, and his alone.

“Look. Eddie, _look,” _Richie implored, standing up and rounding the table so he was crouched in front of Eddie, who looked down at him with a mildly panicked expression. 

“I’ve only known you for, hell, one day and one night, but I know, despite all rationality telling me to get the _fuck _out of here as fast as my legs can carry me,” Richie said, eliciting a wet sounding laugh from Eddie, “I know, in here,” Richie grabbed at Eddie’s hand and placed it on the left side of his chest, directly above his rapidly beating heart, “I know, in here, that you’re not a monster”

Eddie let his hand rest gently on Richie’s heart for a few seconds, before drawing it back with a small, caged smile.

“You are very kind, Richard. Now, help me wash the dishes.”

They made quick work of the dishes, with Eddie plunging his hands into the soapy water to clean them, before he handed them to Richie who dried them off with a soft piece of cloth.

“I haven’t eaten a vegetable for nearly two-hundred years, I’d almost forgotten what a carrot tasted like,” Eddie said.

“Really?”

Eddie nodded. “Yes. Whilst the taste is nice, nutritionally, it does nothing for me. It would be the same as you just drinking bowl after bowl of bone-broth. It tastes good, but you’d wither away soon enough”

“So, you get your nourishment from --”

“Blood, Richie. Yes, I drink blood.”

“Human blood?”

“Look,” Eddie turned around, crossing his arms over his chest, leaving a small trail of suds on the floor. “I’m not going to lie to you, or pretend that the maintenance of my life doesn’t cause suffering to others. I exist mostly on a diet of sheep blood, but -- there are only so many months that will tide me over. I do, occasionally, and not without guilt, venture beyond the confines of this town.”

“To find people to eat?”

“I prefer _drink, _as I do not actually -- uh -- eat them. I drink their blood, but yes. To find people.”

“Huh,” Richie said, mulling the notion over in his head. Here he was, standing in front of a man, a _vampire, _who had just readily admitted to killing people to drink their blood, and here he was, standing in front of a vampire, without the slightest sprouting of the seeds of panic in his stomach.

“Huh.”

“Is that it, _huh?_” Eddie said sceptically, and Richie shrugged.

“I mean, yes. I’m not -- I’m not scared? Or, even remotely freaked out? Which, in itself, is freaking me out. I am scared of the fact that I am not scared. Is that normal?”

Eddie laughed, syrupy and warm, and placed a hand on Richie’s shoulder. “I have no idea.”

* * *

The rest of the day passed slowly, like running through sand. After tidying up the kitchen, Eddie ushered Richie back upstairs and back to the room where they’d drank the night before, the evidence of which still stood on the table, the sight of the rich, burgundy wine turning Richie’s stomach.

“What -- what now?”

“Well,” Eddie said, as he walked over to the large, wooden bookcase before he ran his finger across the dusty spines of the many, many books housed on it, “that’s sort of up to you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. I would normally be asleep now, and would only arise when the sun begins to sink beneath the horizon, but, as I’ve explained --”

“Ah, the whole your body wants to_ do things _to me issue.”

Eddie shuddered, before he grinned, a smile slightly too wide, with too many teeth on show, the smile of someone who hasn’t smiled for centuries, the smile of someone with a mouth full of fangs.

“Yes, _that _issue. I have many many books, and, as long as you promise not to pull up any of the plants, I have a -- Well, I have a garden.”

“You mean, the grounds?”

“Sort of. I have a… vegetable patch.”

Richie paused, before shaking his head. “You, creature of the night --”

“Stop calling me that!”

“Edward, stalker of the living, devourer of necks --”

“I’m warning you--”

“You have a _vegetable patch_,” Richie laughed, collapsing backwards on the couch, and he held his stomach as he laughed, for fear that he would explode from sheer joy.

“I’m failing to understand what’s so_ funny _about me growing my own potatoes!” Eddie said, crossing his arms across his chest as he leant against the wall.

“Everything about that is funny. Everything,” Richie said, still laughing. “You don’t even _eat _them! Why do you grow them?”

“It’s … something to do, I suppose. I get bored, moping around this ridiculous building on my own.”

“So I have permission to go and look at your potatoes then?”

“Yes, but don’t you _dare _pick any of my tomatoes, I’ve counted how many --” 

Before Eddie could finish his sentence, Richie had grabbed the nearest book from the shelf, and had skittered out of the room, and had begun to charge down the hallway, not knowing exactly how to get out of the building and into the grounds, but enjoying the air rushing past his ears and the slight burn of his lungs. After turning this way and that, and getting hopelessly lost for nearly fifteen minutes, Richie managed to find his way outside. The air was frigid, and it whipped at his skin with tiny hands. The book now slotted firmly in his back pocket, Richie began wandering the grounds, rubbing dead leaves between his hands and throwing rotten twigs into the air as high as he could, sending them soaring like birds before they inevitably fell to the ground with a sickening crack.

Before long, Richie found the vegetable patch, nestled neatly in the corner of the grounds under the safety of a large, grandfatherly oak. The patch was divided up into orderly rows, six in total, each row with a different crop of vegetables sprouting from the earth. Potatoes in the first, carrots in the second, cucumbers in the third and so on. To annoy Eddie, Richard plucked a juicy looking tomato from the vine and popped it in his mouth, sweetness exploding over his tongue as he crunched into the plump fruit. As he walked around the plots, he noticed that at the end closest to the bordering wall there were little handwritten signs propped up on wooden stakes, written in elaborate, curling cursive letters, indicating which vegetable was growing there, and what date they had been planted. Richie was taken aback by how _normal _Eddie’s handwriting was, how _normal _the whole ritual must have been, when Eddie had written out the names of his plants, had hammered the stakes into the soil, had presumably sat back on his haunches and admired his handiwork. Yes, the whole thing was so _normal, _it forced Richie to sit down and breathe, in and out, in and out, until his heart-rate slowed and he could see more than three feet ahead of him.

“_Must you insist on drawing the line between you and I so harshly?” _

Eddie’s words echoed in Richie’s brain, a cacophony of sound that forced Richie to listen to it, that insisted he drink in its message, that insisted he allow the message to percolate, to ferment in his stomach.

“_Must you insist on drawing the line between you and I so harshly?” _

After he had inspected all of Eddie’s vegetables, tried and failed to open the locked door of the small shed, and eaten a few more of Eddie’s tomatoes for good measure, Richie wandered out onto the huge lawn. The lawn was overgrown but not wildly so, and had wildflowers littered across it sporadically. The grass was plush and bouncy beneath his feet, and it didn’t take much persuading until Richie pulled the book out of his back pocket and lay down. He spread himself out like a cat, and began to read.

* * *

"Richie? Richie, wake up, you’re covered in grass”

When Richie blearily blinked his eyes open, his immediate reaction was to believe that he had, in fact, gone blind. All he could see was nothingness, an oppressive blankness that stretched on for miles and miles, until Eddie’s illuminated face floated into view.

“Rich, how long have you been asleep?”

Asleep. Richie didn’t remember falling asleep, but now that his eyes had become accustomed to the dark, and he could see Eddie standing there, wrapped in a thick, black overcoat and holding a large, hand-crank torch, that was the most obvious conclusion.

“Oh, hey, Eds, long time no see,” Richie groaned, rolling onto his stomach before pushing himself to his feet. His muscles groaned, and he shook out each limb, hoping to shake any remnants of sleep from them.

“Come with me,” Eddie said, not waiting for Richie to respond before striding off purposefully, “I have something to show you.”

Richie jogged to keep up with Eddie, unleashing a litany of questions to the tune of “_where are we going?” and “Oh I didn’t know you had an outhouse!” _until Eddie stopped in front of a pair of metal gates, locked with a heavy chain and padlock.

“Now, what I’m about to show you is my pride and joy. This, Richard Tozier, is what I call _The Poison Garden. _Within these gates is the most beautiful garden you will ever lay your eyes on, and each and every one of these plants, if consumed, would send you spiralling down a tunnel of agony you cannot even comprehend”

Richie nodded. “That -- is actually very cool, Eds, and exactly the kind of plants I expected a vampire to grow.”

“Are you insulting my potatoes again?”

“Would I do that?” Richie said, faux-shocked, and Eddie laughed.

“Yes, yes you would. But, if I am to let you inside these gates, you must promise me, sincerely, that you will not touch or eat any of these plants.”

“I’m not a cow, Eddie, I’m not about to go chomping on your foliage.”

“_Promise me, Richard.”_

“Okay, okay, I promise.”

When he was satisfied that Richie’s promise was genuine, Eddie pulled a ring of keys out of his pocket, and unlocked the gates, which swung open with a loud creak.

“After you,” Eddie said, and he thrust his arm outwards, guiding Richie inside.

The garden, as Eddie had promised, was beautiful. Unlike the neat, orderly rows of plants in vegetable patch, this garden was more sporadically organised, as if Eddie had stood in the middle of the narrow path and thrown the seeds into the air to be carried to their rightful place by the wind. Richie walked forwards, not noticing that Eddie had hung back, and he scanned the garden with awe. Each plant was encased inside its own little metal cage that didn’t affect the amount of light the plant got, or impede its growth, but stopped any rogue animals from taking a lethal bite. Like the vegetable patch, however, each plant had a little handwritten sign, with information about the effects on the human body upon consumption of the plant, and, endearingly, Eddie had drawn a tiny white skull on each sign.

“That one is called belladonna,” Eddie muttered into Richie’s ear, and Richie jumped, having not been aware that Eddie was so close to him, close enough to speak directly into his ear without the sound bleeding out into the surroundings. 

“Belladonna, otherwise known as deadly nightshade, is one of the most toxic plants in the world. They say consuming it can send a man insane, that is, if your nervous system doesn’t turn to sludge first. Brutal stuff, but just so beautiful, don’t you think?”

“Uh-huh,” Richie replied, barely making a sound. Something about their proximity, something about having Eddie practically pressed up against his back, speaking in hushed tones directly into his ear, set Richie’s skin alight.

“That one over there,” Eddie continued, pointing at another caged plant over Richie’s shoulder, “that one is _conium maculatum, _or poison hemlock. See its beautiful white flowers? Well, eat those and your muscles will constrict, and your lungs will fail, and you’ll heave your last sorry breath, all for eating just one of those little white flowers.”

“You know a lot about plants,” Richie said, turning his head to look past Eddie’s hand, but, when Eddie’s breath hitched slightly, he realised that he had just bared his entire neck right in Eddie’s face. Richie held his breath, waiting for the inevitable pain that would shoot up his neck when Eddie –

“I’ve had a lot of time to learn,” is all Eddie said, however, and he stepped back, stepped away from Richie and his defenceless neck, and walked further down the path. He made it only a few steps before he turned on his heel, and held his hand out.

“Are you coming?”

When they got to the other end of the garden, there was another small wooden shed. Eddie took the ring of keys out of his pocket once more and unlocked it, before he disappeared inside for a few seconds. He emerged holding a small, potted sapling in one hand, and a pair of large, rubber bright yellow gloves in another.

“I need to plant this young thing before she dies in that shed, she’s ready to be put to the soil. It’ll only take a few moments and then I shall escort you back to the house,” Eddie said, and he placed the plant pot on the ground and putting the gloves on.

“Oh, Eds, believe me, I could sit and watch you prance about in those gloves for _hours, _take your time,” Richie laughed.

“What? What’s wrong with my gloves?” Eddie asked, staring at his gloved hands as if they’d suddenly speak up and tell him the answer.

“I mean -- bright yellow rubber gloves? That go almost the whole way up your arms? Can you really not see how that isn’t funny?”

“Well, I suppose -- I don’t even really need them, the plants, they don’t -- affect me. I’ll take them off,” Eddie mumbled, as he began to take the gloves off.

“I didn’t mean to offend you. I think they’re quite dashing --”

“It’s fine, really. I guess it was silly of me to keep up with the pretence, I just --”

Eddie paused, and looked up at Richie, with a helpless expression. The gloves hung limply in Eddie’s grasp.

“Do you know why I love flowers and plants so much?”

“Because they’re pretty?” Richie guessed, but Eddie shook his head.

“I love them so much because they die.”

“... That certainly is a novel reason for loving plants so much,” Richie said, tone jovial and light but Eddie shook his head again.

“No, I -- look. When I was a boy, when I was still … when I was younger, my mother locked me away. People kept disappearing in the town, and she was paranoid that I’d join their ranks and be the next little boy to disappear in the night. So, she locked me up in this house, and didn’t let me leave. For _years.” _

“Shit, seriously? Not even into the grounds?”

“Not even into the grounds,” Eddie continued, “and I used to watch the gardeners, with their silly rubber gloves and their pruning shears, spend _hours _out here, tending to the garden and making it look _beautiful. _Then, when the frosts came and everything died, they’d collect all the dead, like the men who collected the dead after the plague times, and then the spring would come, and they’d start again.”

“I can’t believe she locked you up, like a princess in a tower.”

“Yes, yes, that isn’t really the point. When I became … this ... When I was turned, and everyone left, and they boarded up the house, I watched the garden sprout and grow and blossom without any help, without any intervention. But, when the frosts came, year after year, they died. They all died, as living things are wont to do. Would you -- Would you think I was crazy if I said I find comfort in death?”

Richie shrugged. “Not really, no”

“I can’t die, I found that out when I tried to throw myself off of one of the balconies. My bones didn’t even _shatter, _Richie. Not one. Watching my flowers die, watching them bloom and blossom and thrive and then shrivel, turn brown and die, it reminds me that … not everything is chaotic. Some things … Some things are inevitable.”

“Inevitable, like …” Richie paused, unsure of how to continue, “like …”

“Say it.”

“I --”

“Richie, say it.”

“Inevitable like us?”

Eddie smiled, and thrust the gloves into Richie’s hands.

“Yes, like us”

* * *

Despite his initial qualms, Richie settled into mansion life with remarkable ease. 

Eddie’s body remained hypersensitive to Richie’s presence, so they’d spend the days holed up together, moving from room to room leisurely, from library to kitchen to sunroom, but together, always together. They’d spend the days reading aloud to each other from Eddie’s expansive, sprawling collection of books, or they’d sit quietly, basking in each other’s presence, or Richie would sit hunched over reams of paper as he sketched out the maps he knew from memory, and Eddie would watch him. Then, sometimes, when the top floor library was the only still point of the turning world, Richie would, with sweeping lines, draw out a map of his home town. Voice door-mouse quiet, hoarse from lack of use, Richie would begin to tell Eddie about the town, “_that’s my house, my parents’ house, and that is where the tree is that I fell out of, and my grandmother lives here, and that’s where …”. _Eddie would listen, eyes trained to the page, absorbing each little snippet of Richie’s life, each little crumb of who Richie _was. _Richie’s pen would dance across the page, a complicated foxtrot that Eddie didn’t understand, but loved to watch. This would go on for hours, until Richie had projected his entire town, his entire life, onto the page, and Eddie would remain perfectly, entirely silent, content just to listen, just to observe.

Occasionally, Eddie would excuse himself, some unknowable errands calling his name, and he’d be gone for several hours. When he’d return, his pupils would be blown, eyes as wide and as bright as polished dinner-plates. The times when Eddie’s eyes were the widest and his breathing was loud and erratic were the times that he was the most tactile with Richie. A fleeting touch here, a hand that lingers on the small of Richie’s back as they walk, a hand that pushes errant locks of hair behind Richie’s ear. It’d stop though, as soon as Eddie’s eyes returned to normal, the respectful distance between them returned, too.

It took nearly a week of Richie continually getting lost, or wandering into cupboards in the dead of night when he was looking for the bathroom, and being constantly late for dinner before Eddie demanded that he accompany Richie on a tour of the entire mansion. As per Eddie’s demand, the tour began in the grand entrance hall.

“That’s my piano. It was a gift from my father before he died, and I’ve kept it going with sheer willpower ever since. It’s almost as old as I am.”

“Do you still play?”

Eddie shrugged, and avoided Richie’s gaze. “Sometimes.”

The tour was rather whistle-stop, and Eddie didn’t give Richie more than mere seconds at a time to poke his head into each room.

“That’s the seventh bedroom, this is the eighth, the next one is the ninth, the tenth and eleventh are down there. There are two libraries on this floor, a study down there and this --” Eddie paused, and then gingerly pushed open the door revealing a very small room with a bed, a small stool and nothing else inside. “This was my old room.”

When Eddie didn’t enter the room, and chose instead to hover awkwardly in the doorway, Richie pushed his way past, breaching the threshold, before walking steadily into the room. The room was brightly lit by two decent sized windows overlooking the main lawn and flowerbeds, and the small bed had been pushed against the wall underneath them. Richie could so clearly imagine a very tiny Eddie, all those centuries ago, kneeling on the bed, elbows propped up on the stone windowsill, watching the gardeners labour away below. The only other item of furniture in the room was a small wooden stool pushed against the other wall, but, when Richie extended his arm, he could touch it from where he sat on the bed. The room was tiny, barely bigger than the cupboards Richie found himself stuck in most nights on his trips to the bathroom.

“You really lived in here?”

“For several days, yes, before she -- before I convinced her to let me roam the rest of the house.”

The room was tiny, and it grew tinier and tinier still, the walls closing in on Richie every time he thought of Master Edward, hammering on the door, pleading to be let out, pleading to once again feel the sun on his cheek and the wind through his hair, before he’d give up and sit on the bed with no one but the sun’s taunting rays for company.

“With all due respect, Eds, your mother sounds like a bitch,” Richie said, tone too jovial for the weight of his words, and he expected Eddie to snap at him, to accuse him of cruelty, but he didn’t. Instead, Eddie laughed. 

Eddie laughed so much that tears sprang from his eyes, and they chased each other down his face in great, glittering ribbons.

“Oh, Richie,” Eddie said, clutching his belly, “oh how I adore having you here.”

At that, Richie felt the blood rush to his face. “Heh. Tell me again how you escaped?”

As they walked around the rest of the mansion, Eddie regaled Richie with stories from his youth, how he’d snatched the key from around his mother's neck that allowed him to escape, how he’d spent many a winter's night huddled in front of a blazing fire with the groundskeeper sat in the rickety old armchair, scaring him silly with ghost stories of yore, and how the servants used to sneak him crumbs of sweet cakes on hot, sticky afternoons in the summer when he’d long for the feeling of a fresh, summer breeze on his face, when he’d long to feel anything at all. 

They were walking back to the kitchens, Eddie having promised Richie a mug of hot cocoa, when Richie spotted it. A large metal door, entirely unlike the rest of the opposing wooden ones, with four heavy-duty locks set deep into the frame. 

Richie stopped walking immediately, and let Eddie carry on own the hallway, chatting mindlessly to the air. It wasn’t long before Eddie noticed Richie wasn’t with him and turned around.

“Richie? Are you okay?”

“What’s in there?”

“Nothing,” Eddie snapped, marching back to where Richie stood. “Do not concern yourself with what is behind that door."

“But --” Richie started, but Eddie cut him off.

“What is behind that door has _nothing _to do with you, and you shall not seek to discover it. Now, leave it.”

Before Richie could protest further, Eddie stomped off, sending a sharp, “_Come!” _over his shoulder.

Richie followed.

* * *

It took fourteen days of being in almost constant contact with Richie for Eddie’s body to return to normal. Richie first noticed it when Eddie’s eyes began to droop, bulldogish, in the afternoons, and soon after, he began to flinch away from the sun’s midday greeting when they’d sit in the sunroom and play cards. He’d expected it, that one day the vampirism squirming in Eddie’s veins would rear its ugly head and pull Eddie away from Richie and back towards what he truly was. 

The days without Eddie were long and tedious, and, more often than not, Richie found himself pacing the corridors aimlessly, counting down the hours until the sun sank below the horizon and the familiar sound of Eddie shifting in his room began to echo around the mansion. Eddie would emerge, smacking his lips, with his hair sticking up wildly, and he’d greet Richie with a sleepy, “_Good evening_” that would shake the butterflies in Richie’s stomach until they awoke themselves.

If asked to pinpoint when his attraction towards Eddie transcended simply being physical and entered the unpredictable realm of emotional, Richie would have to shrug. It was as simple as if it had happened spontaneously, as if he’d woken up one morning, walked downstairs to the kitchen where Eddie was bent over the stove, meticulously stirring herbs into a bubbling pot, and Richie’s heart had suddenly burst into song, “yes, yes, it’s him, it’s him,_ it’s him.” _Whilst he still didn’t understand this bond that Eddie spoke of reverently, and whilst he didn’t believe in soulmates, and had said as much to a bemused looking Eddie, Richie felt _something. _It wasn’t a cosmic force, nor was it a metaphysical hand guiding him towards Eddie without consulting him first. It was something lighter, something more delicate, like a string of the most fragile spider silk had been woven between them, no wider than a hair, and the longer they spent together, the more Richie looked at Eddie, really _looked, _the more convinced he was that one day he’d be on his knees before Eddie, and he’d thrust own his beating heart clasped into Eddie’s hands, bloody and raw. Spider silk turned platinum. 

At the time when the only light came from the fireflies floating like embers in the inky darkness, it was this same _something _that pulled Richie’s eyelids open, an insatiable desire to be _near _Eddie stopping him from truly slipping away into blissful, restorative unconsciousness. Though he was fearful of encroaching on Eddie’s nighttime activities, more often than not, Richie waged victorious campaigns against the part of him that pleaded that he remain in bed, that he shut his eyes against curiosity. More often than not, Richie found himself tip-toeing to the door of his room and coaxing it open with tiny, jerky movements to avoid the tell-tale creak that would alert Eddie to his rising.

As soon as the door swung open the first time Richie snuck out of bed, though, a different noise invaded the room, swirling and dancing in the air until it was all Richie could hear. Immediately, memories of his first night in the mansion flooded back to him, memories of a haunting cry that came from the belly of the house. Filled with a reckless sort of determination, Richie crept down the hallway, and, as he walked, the sound swelled around him, growing louder and more insistent with each step. 

Richie burst onto the main balcony that overlooked the entrance hall at precisely the same moment that the sound crescendoed, before it fell gently downwards, furious yelling replaced by comforting whispers.

It was Eddie. 

Eddie was sat at the piano, back rod-straight, hands flying over the ivory keys frantically. Richie didn’t recognise the piece, but was more than content to crouch down on his haunches, lest he be seen by Eddie, close his eyes, and listen. The tempo peaked and troughed at seemingly random intervals, and Richie wondered idly whether Eddie was playing a pre-existing song or whether he was having his hands be guided by the invisible muses, letting his body become a conduit. 

Without consciously wishing to, Richie began to awake most nights, body and soul alight with anticipation. He’d sneak out of his room, and hunker down in his spot on the balcony, concealed by darkness, and he’d watch Eddie play. 

Until a rogue sneeze escaped his nose before he could stop it, and his cover was blown.

With a hand covering his nose, as if it could claw the sneeze back in, Richie watched Eddie jump so hard he stood up, snapping his head this way and that, searching for the noisy intruder.

“Up here, Eddie,” Richie called out, face pulsing with heat and embarrassment. 

“Richie! I -- how long have you been there?”

Richie gulped. “Not that long, perhaps an hour or so?”

Eddie shifted, and closed the lid of the piano with a loud bang. “You must return to your room, it is very late.”

“You’re beautiful, you know,” Richie blurted, without thinking.

“Beautiful?”

“I mean, you _play _beautifully. I didn’t recognise the piece, though.” Richie said, beginning to descend the stairs to where Eddie was still sat at the piano, hands knotted in his lap.

“I have begun to write my own music, a somewhat … recent development, I must admit.”

“How recent?”

“A few weeks, perhaps. I cannot be specific.”

Richie regarded Eddie steadily, and rested his hand on the top of the piano, as if to feel its heartbeat.

“Be specific."

Eddie placed his hand next to Richie’s, with an all but a negligible amount of space between them. “Eighteen days.”

“The exact length of time I have been here,” Richard said, a statement of fact that neither needed to hear aloud.

“Yes,” Eddie replied, simply. “The exact length of time you have been here.”

* * *

Richie sat in the gardens, and, as he watched two small rabbits dance in the lush undergrowth, he decided that tomorrow, when the moon had risen, her smiling face bathing the world in cool light, he would ask, nay _insist, _that Eddie accompany him on a walk. They would leave the mansion, leave the grounds, to see if they truly did exist in the world beyond the borders of the bubble of existence that they had meticulously created with shared efforts. Whilst he was content to hide away with Eddie, an ever-growing part of him desired to breach the womb-like comfort of the mansion. He stood in front of the mirror, rehearsing his lines, practicing how he would convince Eddie to venture into the wilderness with him, but, much to his bemusement, it wasn’t necessary. 

“Of course,” Eddie agreed, “if that is what you want, then that is what we shall do.”

That night, with the wind howling and rain falling from the sky in great, bloated drops, Richie and Eddie ventured out of the relative safety of the mansion and into the mercy of the wider world. Eddie had insisted that Richie wear one of his coats, a great, woollen thing that swamped even Richie’s lanky frame, but he was grateful for the shelter it provided from the weather as they trundled down the hill into the town of Krov. They barely spoke, as Eddie watched the moon with his dinner-plate eyes, and Richie watched Eddie. 

Abruptly, Eddie stopped walking. 

“Are you okay?” Richie asked, walking backwards for a few steps before he was stood next to Eddie once more. Eddie continued to stare at an inconspicuous spot on the ground.

“This is where it happened.”

“Pardon?”

“This is where … this is where I was turned.”

_Oh. _The fury radiating from Eddie was palpable, a hot current of air fighting the arctic winds. Richie had barely asked Eddie about the circumstances of his turning, and Eddie had offered little to no information himself. It was a vast and foreboding secret, something that Richie was desperate to know but reticent to ask. The look on Eddie’s face, a look of sheer savagery, like he would rip the larynx from the creature who did this to him with his bare hands and not think twice, set Richie’s stomach on edge. 

Up until this moment, it had been easy to convince himself that, whilst Eddie was in possession of two rather large canine teeth, and professed to being centuries old, he was – in all the ways that counted – still human. But now, with his too large teeth bared in a too large mouth that snarled like a wolf, and his eyes, with the pupils blown and the rest an unnatural white, Eddie looked different. Eddie looked _scary. _

“Eds …” Richie cautioned, laying a timid hand on Eddie’s bicep. “Eds, can we go?”

Immediately, as if Richie’s words were as sharp as pins, Eddie deflated.

“Yes, uh -- of course. I seem to have … forgotten myself,” Eddie said, as if in a daze, before he allowed himself to be gently tugged away from the spot by Richie, who vowed that never again would they return to that spot.

The silence of the town was deafening. The buildings were the same as they had been when Richie arrived, the same dilapidated, crumbling walls and the same sloping rooves. But, with Eddie stood next to him, fists clenched into tight rocks, it felt different. Now, more so than before, Richie could picture the town as it had been before, a bustling town, thrumming with the energy of life. But now, the only indication that there had ever been life here were the things abandoned in the street, a chair, a bowl, a children's toy, and the incredibly guilty look currently spread across Eddie’s face.

They walked in hushed reverence along the rows of houses, Eddie peering inside each open door, and Richie watched him. Richie watched him walk inside one particular house, and lie his hand flat on the bed, with his eyes shut and his mouth pulled into a thin, straight line.

“Did someone you know live here?” Richie asked, painfully aware of the intimate moment he was intruding on, but unable to squash the curiosity within him.

Eddie’s head snapped up. “Yes.”

Richie wanted to ask more, ask who lived here, ask who it was that Eddie’s eyes glittered for, but he didn’t. Instead, he watched. A silent observer to Eddie’s very palpable, and very private, grief.

“There’s a river,” Eddie whispered, a small sound that thundered in the silence. “I want to show it to you.”

The river was a mile or so from the town, and they walked there in silence, Eddie several steps ahead of Richie. When they arrived, Richie was awestruck. The river was high and fast-flowing, and curved this way and that, a jagged vein on the otherwise perfectly untouched valley. 

“I used to come here and think when I was younger. It’s beautiful, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Richie agreed immediately, not looking at the river. “It’s beautiful.”

Despite Eddie’s protestations that he might fall in and be swept away, Richie stood on the very edge of the riverbank, staring at his reflection, warped by the fast flowing current. 

“The river is hungry, Richie. Everything it consumes, it spits out again, but it’s hungry. You must fear it,” Eddie said right in Richie’s ear, causing him to jump and spring backwards.

“Holy shit! I didn’t see you --” 

Then it dawned on Richie, slamming into him like the tide against rock.

“You don’t -- You don’t have a reflection, Eddie”

Eddie sighed. “No, I don’t. It’s another symptom of this disease, another _curse. _ I haven’t seen myself since I was eighteen years old, and _that _was over four centuries ago. I suppose I must look rather monstrous now.”

“I wouldn’t say monstrous, not at all. Just --” Richie paused, gesturing with his hands as if he might pluck the right word out of the air, “different.”

“Well that’s incredibly reassuring, Richard, _thank you_”

“Different isn’t bad!” Richie insisted, backtracking, “different isn’t bad at all. Look, I’ll tell you what you look like, so you understand.”

Richie stood back, surveying Eddie’s face as one does a work of art, with his eyebrows knitted.

“Well, you’ve got pale skin, but I suppose that much is obvious. You’ve got greyish-whiteish eyes, and they can be rather spooky in the dark,”

“_Charming!” _Eddie interrupted, but Richie dismissed his comment with a wave of his hand.

“But sometimes, when the light catches them when we’re sat in the sunroom, or when we are in the library with the fire blazing, sometimes … they look like molten silver, and that’s,” Richie coughed, “that’s quite lovely. You’ve got a messy crop of the darkest, blackest hair I’ve ever seen, and when you wake up it sticks up in all directions, and then that, combined with when you have creases from your pillow all over your face, I just want to --”

“_Richie,_” Eddie cautioned, but Richie continued.

“I, um. Your nose is pinched, and quite pointy, but it suits your face, like the peak of a mountain. Your mouth --”

Richie stopped, and his eyes flitted back and forth between Eddie’s mouth and eyes.

“Your mouth is large, perhaps bigger than normal. Your teeth, well … they _are _rather frightening but … when you laugh, when you _really _laugh and you smile, not that stupid smile you do when I know you’re trying to hide your teeth, you look --”

“_Richard.”_

Richie shrugged. “You look beautiful.”

Eddie placed his hand on Richie’s face, his fingers brushed the hinge of Richie’s jaw, and Richie had but a second to panic before Eddie tilted his face down, and fitted their mouths chastely together. Richie, as if on autopilot, pressed himself against Eddie, knee to chest, and his hands gently gripped Eddie’s waist, fingers curled in the soaking wet fabric of his overcoat.

After a few seconds, Eddie pulled away, just barely, just enough to stare into Richie’s eyes evenly.

“_Eddie,” _Richie whined, a pathetic sort of noise that he would have been embarrassed about had Eddie not practically growled and pulled Richie back down, back in.

Eddie tilted his head, as if he meant to go deeper, and fangs scraped across Richie’s lower lip. As much as Richie hadn’t anticipated kissing Eddie at that exact moment, it would be patently untrue to suggest that he hadn’t thought about doing it at some point. Those nights that he’d spent fantasising about when he’d do it, whether he’d corner Eddie after breakfast or whether he’d grab Eddie’s wrist and haul him in when they were walking around Eddie’s poison garden, he’d always come back to one thing, the thing that made his gut swirl with anticipation.

The fangs.

The same fangs that were, at that very moment, pressed gently into the soft swell of Richie’s lower lip.

Richie pulled away, gasping.

“_Shit,” _Eddie cussed, and stepped away from Richie with clumsy steps, “I shouldn’t have -- I assumed that, you kept saying that I was _beautiful, _and --”

“Eddie,” Richie said as he stepped into Eddie’s personal space, crowding him against the trunk of a tree, hands cradling Eddie’s face, “_Eddie._”

“Fuck, Richie -- _Fuck!” _

They stood there, sheltering under the boughs of the tree, the wind roaring it’s encouragement, and kissed.

* * *

“_NO!” _

Eddie smacked the spoon out of Richie’s hand with a growl, and his movement sent the contents of Richie’s bowl cascading over the floor.

“What the hell is _wrong _with you, Eddie! I was about to --”

“It’s fucking _poisonous, _Richie. It’s poisonous. I was looking in one of my books to see how long I needed to let the vegetable boil – I didn’t know its name, but I’ve been eating it for centuries – but the book said that it’s poisonous! I could have _killed _you!” Eddie yabbered, wringing his hands as he stood over the mess on the floor, staring at the lumps of apparently-poisonous vegetables.

“I can eat it because my insides are practically dead, but if you had eaten it … if I had let you eat it … I couldn’t live with myself, Richie, I’ve only had you for a few months and I nearly killed you myself.”

And then, Richie learnt that it was perfectly possible for a vampire to cry.

Richie gathered Eddie up in his arms, and stroked a comforting hand through Eddie’s hair as the vampire wept against his chest.

“Eddie, Eddie, I’m still here, I didn’t eat any, you’ve still got me, _you’ve still got me, Eds, _I’m not going anywhere.”

“Do you promise?” Eddie asked

Richie pressed his promise to Eddie’s lips.

– x –

“_SHUT THE DOOR!”_

Richie slammed the door shut, but what he had seen would be etched onto the back of his eyelids for centuries to come.

“_RICHARD,” _Eddie boomed from inside, voice syrupy and wet, “_GO AWAY!” _

Richie didn’t move.

“I know you’re still there,” Eddie’s voice was wet, and as he spoke, his words were interspersed with ugly, slurping sounds. “I can hear you breathing.”

A coppery, metallic smell lingered around Richie’s head, a heady fog that sent his head spinning and his mind racing.

He’d burst into the room, excited to tell Eddie that the asparagus spears had begun to stick out of the earth, but he’d found Eddie slumped over the body of a rather large sheep, mouth attached to the animals neck. Eddie’s eyes had rolled back into his head, an expression of pure ecstasy, as he slurped at the blood gushing from two large puncture wounds on the animals neck greedily, the dark red liquid smeared around his neck and face. 

“This is my reality, Richard,” Eddie said, pulling the door open. “This is what I am.”

This Eddie was different. This wasn’t the Eddie that Richie had kissed at the riverbank, this wasn’t the Eddie that curled up like a cat next to Richie on the couch, and read Richie’s book over his shoulder. This wasn’t the Eddie that cried from laughter when Richie had fallen over in the mud when his feet gave way from under him in the vegetable patch, sending carrots flying over his shoulder like tiny orange arrows. No, this Eddie, this Eddie who wiped the back of his hand across his mouth roughly, this Eddie who had pupils blown wide, and who chattered his teeth together like an excited hyena, this Eddie was _different, _and Richie was terrified by how much he _wasn’t _terrified.

“I’m not scared,” he blurted, as he stared at the droplet of blood that was still clinging to Eddie’s bottom lip. “I know I should be scared, but I’m not. I’m not even a tiny bit scared.”

Eddie laughed. “You’re a strange little thing, aren’t you.”

“Not half as strange as the vampire who grows potatoes in his back garden,” Richie shot back, before he pulled Eddie into an embrace.

It took two weeks to get the blood stains out of his shirt.

* * *

Eddie’s hand was pressed against Richie’s throat, a barely-there pressure that had Richie squirming underneath him, rutting against Eddie’s leg that was slotted possessively between his own. They were shirtless, with Richie’s legs bracketing Eddie’s hips as he hovered over him. They had been going at it for a while now; what had started as chaste kisses and gentle hands on waists had become needy, insistent and breathy over a remarkably short space of time.

With Eddie hovering over him, skin ghoulishly pale in the flickering glow of the candlelight, Richie was sure no one else had ever been more aroused than he was in that moment. He bucked his hips up, desperate to make contact with Eddie’s thigh, his dick straining painfully against the fabric of his trousers.

“_So needy,” _Eddie hissed, and he shifted his attention from Richie’s mouth to his neck, ghosting his breath along the length of Richie’s exposed jaw. “So _needy, _so _ready, _would you let me take you now? If I asked very nicely?”

Richie nodded feverishly, mind focused on nothing but the feeling of Eddie’s hand snugged to his jaw.

“Do you want me to? Take you right here? With you flat on your back?”

“Yuh-_yes, _Eddie, _fuck –”_

“Do you? It’d be so easy, you know. So easy to just –” Eddie paused, trailing one of his hands down, skating it over the taut, trembling skin of Richie’s chest and stomach, until he’d dragged his fingers, slowly, over the bulge in Richie’s trousers and down, until his fingers were hovering over Richie’s clothed asshole.

“_Eddie, _Eddie, please –”

“Please what?”

“_Please”_

Eddie shifted off of Richie, and sat back on his haunches panting. Richie whined at the loss of contact, at the loss of Eddie’s weight hovering over him, pressing him down into the mattress, and he reached out, and tried to pull Eddie back onto him. Eddie swatted at his arm, and stood up, stumbling a bit, before he left the room in haste. Confused, and rather annoyed, Richie huffed, pushing himself up to a sitting position. Three, or perhaps four, seconds later Eddie returned, holding a small bottle of oil in his hands.

“This will make it easier,” he said, and placed the vial on the table next to the bed, before climbing back up the bed, and back up Richie’s body like a jungle cat.

Before he could capture Eddie between his legs again, however, Eddie shoved an arm underneath Richie and deftly flipped him over, so that Richie was now lying face-down on the bed, dick trapped against his heaving stomach. Eddie was on him instantly; he placed open-mouthed, wet kisses against Richie’s neck, before Eddie shifted, and began trailing kisses over Richie’s shoulder, down his shoulder blades, over the dip of his waist, before he landed at the fleshy swell of his hips.

“I want – Richie, I want to – do you trust me?” Eddie asked, voice crackly.

“Yes,” Richie answered, immediately, as he scrunched the crisp sheets in his fists, as he tried desperately not to transcend this mortal coil.

“I want – just … let me …” Eddie babbled, and then he scraped his teeth along the squishy flesh of Richie’s hips, not applying enough pressure to break the skin, but just enough that Richie cried out, half from surprise and half from concentrated want.

Eddie continued to bite and suck at Richie’s hip, and Richie buried his face in the pillow, biting at the soft cotton to stop himself from sobbing.

With deft fingers, Eddie began to tug at the soft material of Richie’s trousers, encouraging Richie to buck his hips up, allowing him to tug the material over the swell of his ass, and down his thighs.

“So beautiful,” Eddie whispered, a reverent prayer not delivered to Richie himself but to his ass, “so good for me.”

Eddie replaced his mouth with his hand, that continued to squeeze at Richie’s hips, and, even with his eyes still screwed tight and the static buzz of lust screaming in his ear, Richie heard Eddie unscrewing the top of the vial. Richie shivered on the bed, entirely overstimulated but, at the same time, nursing an insatiable need for _more_, for Eddie to touch _more _of him, _all _of him.

And then it was there, an oil-wet finger that probed gently at the tight ring of muscle, and, instinctively, Richie tensed.

“Sssh, my love,” Eddie whispered, and he stroked a comforting hand across Richie’s back, “it’s just me.”

Richie nodded, and his breath heaved out of him in great, staccato wheezes as he willed himself to relax. Two of Eddie’s fingers, both wet and dripping, rested against the ring of muscle, slender fingers between the cheeks of Richie’s ass like they were meant to be there, like they had always been there. Slowly, painfully slowly, so slowly that Richie felt like he was about to scream from sheer anticipation, Eddie’s fingers began to move. They circled Richie’s sensitive opening that twitched uncontrollably, as spikes of not-quite-pleasure rippled through Richie’s body.

With a careful confidence, a certainty that made Richie’s dick twitch from where it was trapped his stomach, Eddie finger bared down on Richie’s opening, until, after pushing past a little amount of resistance, it entered him. Richie’s body instinctively tensed once more, before Eddie leant forwards, and began to press small kisses to the small of his back.

“So good, Rich, so good,” Eddie praised, and Richie’s brain flicked into overdrive, as it oscillated between embarrassment and an unabashed desire for more, to such an extent that, when Eddie began to draw his finger back, Richie’s hips chased it wantonly.

Eddie chuckled, a deep vibrato that cut through Richie’s embarrassment like butter, and he drew his finger back, only to sink it in a little deeper the next time, and again, and again, until Eddie’s finger were burrowed up to the knuckle in Richie’s ass. The motion was smooth, thanks to the oil, and the not-quite-pleasure had been replaced by a rapidly solidifying pleasure buried deep in his gut that was growing and growing with every thrust of Eddie’s skilled fingers.

“Are you okay, love?” Eddie asked, and Richie almost laughs.

Richie shifted, and spat the corner of the pillow out of his mouth.

“I’m – fuck. _Move, _Eddie,” he tried to command, but when spoken aloud, the words just sound like he was begging, like he was pleading. Perhaps he was.

Eddie obeys. It was slow at first, a teasing, languid movement that had Richie writhing beneath him, before it became firmer, a more confident rhythm that turned Richie’s insides to jelly, and his lips parted in a soundless groan that only the air heard. Eddie continued to thrust his finger in and out of Richie, before he pulled it back all-together, which caused Richie to whine.

“Could you take another, my love? Are you ready?"

“Fuck me, Eddie,” was Richie’s only response, and Eddie didn’t need to be told twice. However, instead of continuing to finger-fuck him with his face pressed into the bed, Eddie prodded at Richie’s side, prompting him to roll over. Richie obliged, and Eddie shuffled up the bed, and curled himself around Richie’s back. Eddie pushed on Richie’s right leg until it moved forwards so that it was lying at a right angle, giving Eddie access to Richie’s ass once more.

Before he could push his fingers back into Richie, Richie ground down on Eddie’s crotch, a spike of pleasure shot up his spine at the realisation that Eddie was as rock hard as he was.

“Eddie, _Eds, _I want --”

“What do you want, my love?”

“I want you to bite me”

Eddie stilled behind him.

“What?”

“I want you to, _ah, _I want you to fucking _bite me!” _

“Richie,” Eddie warned, “Richie you have no idea what you’re saying.” 

Richie sat up, and twisted around so that he was facing Eddie.

“Yes, I do. I’ve been thinking about it, thinking about what _this,” _he gestured between them, “what this is. What it means, not just for me but for you, too. And these past few months, I’ve -- I’ve …”

“You’ve what?”

“I love you.”

Eddie didn’t say anything, just blinked dumbly at Richie.

“I know you probably don’t believe me, and I know it’s incredibly fast, and I don’t expect you to --”

“I love you too, Richie, but, God, this is bigger than love.”

“What could _possibly _be bigger than love?”

“Come,” Eddie said, and he stood up, and held Richie’s trousers out to him. “I have something to show you.”

* * *

The basement was freezing, and Richie watched with a steady gaze as Eddie unlocked the four heavy padlocks.

“This,” Eddie said, as he heaved the door open and revealed a long, dark, stone staircase, “_this _is bigger than love. I need you to see this, I need you to see all of me, see all of what I have done, before I let you make this decision.”

Richie, unsure of how to respond, pushed past Eddie and began his descent, deep into the underbelly of the house, deep into Eddie’s past. 

The first thing that Richie noticed was a gaping hole in the stonework, large enough for a man to walk through. 

“Who, or _what_ on earth did that_?” _Richie asked, confusion evident in his tone. 

Eddie sighed. “Let me tell you about Patrick.”

* * *

Eddie spoke for nearly an hour, and he paced up and down the room, patently not looking at Richie, who was sprawled on the floor, head resting against the cool stone. 

“I haven’t been down here since,” Eddie confessed, staring at the hole in the wall with an embittered expression, “I can’t bear to see what he did, what _I _did … What I put him through.”

At that, Richie’s head snapped up.

“What the fuck? Eddie, _no, _that wasn’t your fault.”

“How could it possibly _not _be my fault?” 

“How were you supposed to know he’d turn into a feral beast? No, you were the victim, as much as those --”

“Richard,” Eddie said, voice trembling, “do not compare what I went through to those people who had their throats ripped out by that _animal. _Do not.”

It made sense now, of course. Why Eddie’s lusty expression had so rapidly been replaced by a mask of panic, why Eddie was so reticent to even entertain the idea of turning Richie. Eddie, compelled by the kind of loneliness that gnaws at your soul, had taken a risk, and it had so horribly backfired that it had left all but visible scars across Eddie’s entire body. Eddie, his trusting, wonderful, Eddie had been duped by a creature so evil, that even the vampirism coursing through his veins could not have affected his nature that much.

“You know I’m not Patrick, right?” Richie said, sitting up. 

Eddie scoffed. “Of course, you are nothing like that brute. But what if --”

“Go on,” Richie prompted.

“What if it goes wrong? What if I … what if I lose you? What if I accidentally _kill _you? I could --”

“You will lose me either way, darling. I will age, I will grow coarse and weary, and you will no longer love me,” Richie said, and he stood up, walked over to where Eddie was hunched in the corner, and grasped Eddie’s hands in his own.

“I will _always _love you,” Eddie insisted, fiercely, but Richie shook his head.

“You cannot love me when I am dead, Eddie. I will age, and change, and then I will die. Like your flowers, I will rot and turn brown with decay.”

Tears began to trickle down Eddie’s face.

“It is such a horrible choice, Richie,” he said, voice wobbling.

“I know, darling, I know”

* * *

The candles flickered in the breeze of the open window, and Richie screwed his eyes shut. Eddie was between his legs, lapping over Richie’s asshole with a broad, wet tongue. He’d been there for what, to Richie, felt like eons, teasing Richie’s hole open with a pointed tongue that darted inside, just for a moment, before the lapping, and the sucking resumed and Richie was left frustratingly empty. Occasionally, Eddie would graze the pointed tip of his fangs over the soft, vulnerable skin of Richie’s inner thigh, pressing in just enough to hear Richie gasp, before he’d pull away again.

“_Eds, _I can’t – _please, _c’mere, Eddie, please,” Richie moaned, and he buried his hands in Eddie’s hair before he gave it a sharp tug.

Eddie pulled off of Richie’s thigh, and slithered back up Richie’s body, and pressed their mouths together.

Anticipation pooled in Richie’s stomach like lava, and it took all of his self-control not to force Eddie to chomp down on his neck, but he knew what had to happen first, he knew what he had to wait for. An aching, primal urge tugged ruthlessly at Richie’s lower stomach, and he groaned as he felt it travel up his spine, reaching a deafening crescendo behind his eyes. With Eddie grinding down, swivelling his hips down against Richie’s, their bare cocks brushing together, Richie threw his head back, exposing his bare neck.

Eddie immediately dropped his head, and licked a long strip up the length of Richie’s neck, beginning at his clavicle and ending at the hinge of his jaw.

“You smell so _good,” _ Eddie moaned, nose buried in Richie’s hair, “you have no _idea _what it’s been like for me, all of these months, not letting myself _smell _you, not letting myself _have _you.”

“You have me,” Richie babbled, “you have me.”

“I do,” Eddie said, “I do”

Arousal spiked in the cradle of Richie’s hips, a white hot electric heat that spread like wildfire. “Eddie, I’m ready, I’m ready –”

Wordlessly, Eddie pushed Richie onto his side, the same position they’d been in before, when Richie had asked Eddie to bite him. This time, though, as Richie lay there, back nestled against Eddie’s chest, Eddie draped his arm over Richie’s shoulder, positioning it so the soft flesh of his forearm was positioned in front of Richie’s mouth.

“You know what you need to do, right?” Eddie asked, breathlessly, and Richie nodded.

Two oil-slick fingers pushed their way into Richie’s ass, and Richie bit down on Eddie’s arm, and began to suck.

Eddie gasped behind him, a noise he’d never heard Eddie make before, breathy and high-pitched.

“Drink, _ah, _drink up, Rich, _oh fuck oh fuck”_

“Does it hurt?” Richie asked, voice thick and wet, mouth still half full of Eddie’s blood, but Eddie shook his head.

“It – _ah, _it the opposite of hurts, Rich, oh _fuck”_

As Richie sucked on Eddie’s arm, swallowing mouthful after mouthful of blood, Eddie’s fingers worked in his ass, maintaining a furious rhythm that worked in sync with Richie’s greedy slurps.

Soon, when Richie’s stomach sat hot and heavy, Eddie gently pulled his arm back. “Are you ready?” he asked.

“Yes, fucking _do it, _Eddie, _do it”_

Eddie pulled Richie back, and Richie jolted when he felt the press of Eddie’s solid length against his ass. _Need _swirls wildly in his stomach, and he holds his breath, waiting for the press of Eddie’s dick against his entrance. It comes slowly at first, Eddie edging forward with gentle caution, dick slippery with the same oil as before. The tip of his cock nudges at Richie’s tight opening, and he pressed forward, Richie’s eyes snapping shut instantly, mouth parted in a silent gasp.

Eddie edged in, inch by inch, centimetre by centimetre, until he bottoms out and Richie’s ass was pressed snuggly against his crotch.

“_oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck,” _Richie jabbered, and his hips stuttered in Eddie’s lap, micro-movements that sent sparks of not-quite-pleasure and not-quite-plain up his spine.

Eddie waited until Richie stopped jabbering to start moving, but when he did, Richie’s head fell back on Eddie’s shoulder, and he forgot where he was, forgot his own name, all he remembered, all he cared about was the blunt drag of Eddie’s cock, in and out of him, a rhythm as smooth and as regular as ocean waves. Experimentally, Richie pushed his ass back against Eddie’s thrust, meeting it in the middle, and earning himself a “_oh, Richie, oh, oh God…” _for his efforts.

“You’re doing so well, my love,” Eddie praised, hand snaking around to grasp at Richie’s dick, “you’re doing so well.”

Heat flooded to the base of Richie’s spine, a cloying heat that grew and grew as Eddie continued slamming into him, breath stuttering in his ear.

“I’m gonna come, _fuck, _Eddie, Eddie, do it.”

“Are you sure?"

“I love you,” Richie gasped in response, and he felt Eddie nod behind him, before he felt a sharp, piercing pain on his neck, and his vision went black. At that moment, with his lover’s hands scrabbling around his neck, Richard Tozier died.

* * *

The first thing Richie saw when he opened his eyes with Eddie’s face hovering above him, eyes wet. The first thing Richie felt when he opened his eyes was an unfamiliar toothache, overwhelming in its intensity.

Richie swirled his tongue around his mouth carelessly, and jolted with shock.

There, sat in his mouth, as if they’d always been there were two, razor sharp, huge fangs.

“_Happy Birthday, Richie_”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eeee it's finished!! thank you so much for reading <3
> 
> [Catch me on tumblr @ queen-sock](https://queen-sock.tumblr.com/)

**Author's Note:**

> new story heh heh heh
> 
> catch me on tumblr @ queen-sock


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